Discuss the safeguards needed to protect migrant workers and marginalised groups from wrongful disenfranchisement during electoral roll revisions.

Universal adult franchise under Article 326 is real only if a citizen's name is on the electoral roll. The ECI's Special Intensive Revision (SIR) has removed about 13 crore names, and scientists warn that the poor, migrants and marginalised communities are hit hardest [1]. Clean rolls are a valid goal, but they need safeguards against excluding eligible voters.

Why these groups are at risk

• Migrant workers are often away during house-to-house enumeration, so they get marked "absent" or "shifted".
• The poor, Adivasis and the homeless hold few documents. When voters must re-prove eligibility, they drop out first [1].
• Scale magnifies error. Bihar's draft roll removed 65 lakh names, and 21.53 lakh electors were then added through Form 6 claims [2].

Safeguards needed

Due process

• No deletion without notice and a chance to show cause (Lal Babu Hussein, 1995) [5]. In 2026 the Supreme Court held that the notice-and-hearing safeguards of Rule 21A must be preserved in substance [3].
• Doubts about citizenship must be referred to the competent authority under the Citizenship Act, 1955, with a hearing. They should not end in summary deletion [3].

Accessible proof

• Accept widely held documents such as Aadhaar, which the Court ordered to be included in Bihar [3].
• Offer BLO-assisted filing, notices in local languages, and help desks in slums and tribal hamlets.

Transparency and accountability

• Publish every deleted name with reasons, searchable by EPIC number, in every State.
• Run independent random-sample audits of deletions to measure error rates. This answers the transparency gaps the scientists flagged [1].

Migrant-specific

• Let voters file forms online or at their place of work. Defer "shifted" deletions until the voter has been contacted.
• Pursue remote voting for domestic migrants.

Effective remedy

• Set time-bound appeals, with decisions added through a supplementary roll before polling, as the Court ordered for West Bengal [4].
• Allow judicial review for persons wrongly deleted as absent, dead, shifted or duplicate [3].

Clean rolls and inclusive rolls are not opposites; due process, easy proof, transparency and swift remedy can deliver both. The ECI's fresh verification in Delhi and other States [1] is a chance to build these safeguards into every revision. Doing so would uphold Articles 325–326 and the ideal that no eligible voter is left behind.