Discuss the constitutional and statutory basis of the Election Commission's power to conduct Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. What safeguards are needed to prevent wrongful deletion of genuine electors?

The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) is a house-to-house re-enumeration of electoral rolls, now extended from Bihar to Delhi and other States/UTs. Its legal authority is settled; its method is contested — making procedural safeguards, not power, the live question.

Constitutional basis

• Article 324 vests the superintendence, direction and control of the preparation of electoral rolls in the Election Commission — a plenary power upheld by the Supreme Court in ADR v. ECI (2026), which held SIR legally authorised, proportionate and tied to free and fair elections [1].
• The Court expressly kept the methodology open to challenge, warning it would strike down the exercise if illegality were shown [1].
• Articles 325 and 326 anchor the purpose: universal adult suffrage and non-exclusion — purification must serve inclusion, not shrink the electorate.

Statutory basis

• Representation of the People Act, 1950: Section 21(3) empowers the Commission to direct a special revision of any roll for reasons recorded in writing [2].
• Section 22 permits deletion by the Electoral Registration Officer only after inquiry, and — where the ground is "not ordinarily resident" — only after a reasonable opportunity to show cause [2].
• Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 structure draft publication, claims and objections, and appeal to the District Magistrate within 15 days [3]; Delhi's SIR calendar follows this sequence [4].

Safeguards needed

• Booth-wise publication of deleted names with reasons, as the Court directed for Bihar's 65 lakh exclusions [5].
• Individual notice and a speaking order per deletion — a BLO's tick-box entry cannot substitute for Section 22's hearing [2].
• Re-verification of the "absent/shifted" category, which alone accounts for 43.3 lakh of Delhi's ~47 lakh deletions, over 20 lakh of them aged 30–44 [6].
• A wide document list including Aadhaar, plus fee-free appeals and a single, unambiguous public calendar.

Roll purity and voting rights are complements, not trade-offs. If the Commission pairs its enumeration drive with transparent, name-level reasons and genuine hearings, SIR can strengthen rather than strain the constitutional promise of universal adult franchise.