Examine the constitutional and statutory basis for the Election Commission's power to revise electoral rolls. Discuss the concerns raised by large-scale deletions during Special Intensive Revision exercises.

A clean electoral roll is the foundation of universal adult franchise under Article 326. The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) rests on firm constitutional and statutory authority, yet its scale — over 73 lakh names deleted in the Telangana draft roll — makes procedural safeguards, not power, the real question.

Constitutional basis

• Article 324(1) vests the superintendence, direction and control of the preparation of electoral rolls and the conduct of elections in the ECI [1].
• This is a plenary, residuary power: where law is silent, the ECI may act to secure free and fair polls.
• In 2026 the Supreme Court upheld SIR as constitutionally valid, holding that Article 324 is "not a dead letter", while limiting the ECI to deciding eligibility, not citizenship [4].

Statutory basis

• Representation of the People Act, 1950: Section 21(3) permits special revision of rolls at any time for recorded reasons; Sections 13A–13B create the CEO–ERO machinery; Sections 22–23 govern correction, deletion and inclusion of entries [2].
• Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 prescribe draft publication, claims and objections, and hearing before deletion [3].

Concerns arising from large-scale deletions

• Scale and error risk: Telangana's draft SIR removed 73.39 lakh electors (~21.7%) under the Absent–Shifted–Dead–Duplicate heads [5].
• Disenfranchisement of the mobile poor: "permanently shifted" alone accounted for 45.18 lakh deletions, hitting migrants, tenants and urban informal workers hardest [5]; urban districts like Hyderabad showed the steepest removals.
• Due process: deletion is quasi-judicial — the ECI mandates notice, inquiry, hearing and appeal to the DEO/CEO before any name is struck off [3]; compressed timelines strain this.
• Capacity and transparency: overburdened BLOs, uncollected enumeration forms and opaque flagging criteria fuel political distrust.

Thus the ECI's authority is unquestioned; its legitimacy now depends on execution. Extended claims-and-objections windows, published constituency-wise deletion reasons, portable registration for migrants and independent audit of BLO verification can reconcile "purity of rolls" with the right to vote — realising the Article 324 mandate in substance, not merely in form.