Discuss the constitutional mandate of the Election Commission of India in conducting Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. Examine the concerns raised regarding transparency and due process in recent State-level SIR exercises.

An accurate electoral roll is the foundation of adult suffrage under Article 326. The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) — a house-to-house re-verification of every elector, Karnataka's first such exercise since 2002 — is legally well-grounded, yet its recent rollout has exposed serious gaps in transparency and due process.

Constitutional and statutory mandate

• Article 324 vests the superintendence, direction and control of the preparation of electoral rolls in the ECI, making roll revision a plenary constitutional function, not an executive one [1].
• Section 21(3), Representation of the People Act, 1950 expressly empowers the Commission to direct a special revision of any roll "at any time, for reasons to be recorded" — the statutory hook for SIR [2].
• The mandate is twofold: purity of the roll (removing deceased, shifted and duplicate entries) and inclusiveness of every eligible citizen.
• Procedural safeguards flow from the same mandate — BLO-led enumeration, publication of a draft roll, a claims-and-objections window, and statutory appeals to the DM and CEO [3].
• The Supreme Court, in the Bihar SIR litigation (ADR v. ECI), treated revision as within the ECI's remit but directed acceptance of Aadhaar and publication of details of deleted names [4].

Concerns of transparency and due process

• Scale of deletion: Karnataka's draft roll dropped from 5.13 crore to 4.46 crore — 1.08 crore names (19.5%) removed; Telangana recorded 21.7% [5].
• No benchmark: the Electors-to-Population (18+) ratio, the standard test of under/over-enrolment, was withheld citing absent Census data — leaving no way to judge whether deletions corrected inflation or excluded the eligible [5].
• Urban disenfranchisement risk: nearly 48.9 lakh electors flagged in Bengaluru alone, concentrating the burden of proof on migrants and the urban poor [5].
• Accessibility deficit: poorly searchable deletion lists on the CEO's website effectively hollow out the claims period [5].

SIR's constitutional legitimacy is beyond doubt; its credibility depends on process. Publishing EP ratios, machine-searchable deletion lists, reasoned notice before removal and independent audit before final publication would let the ECI reconcile roll purity with the promise of universal franchise.