The inclusion of deceased persons in draft electoral rolls during SIR raises questions of due process. Critically examine.

The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) is the Election Commission's ground-up re-verification of electoral rolls, carried out after Bihar in nine States and three Union Territories [3]. Delhi's draft roll retaining the late economist Bibek Debroy under the "no mapping" category [4] makes due process, rather than legality, the real test of the exercise.

Where due process concerns are genuine

• Notice to a non-respondent: natural justice presumes a party able to answer. A notice against a deceased elector transfers the burden of documentation to surviving family, with no statutory duty on them to respond [4].
• Algorithmic flagging without explanation: EC software auto-generates "logical discrepancies", producing false positives — even Election Commissioner Sukhbir Singh Sandhu was flagged for a self-name mismatch [4]. Machine-made categories are not self-explanatory to an ordinary elector.
• Burden inversion at scale: with over 33 lakh notices issued after publication of draft rolls [4], a compressed claims-and-objections window makes the elector, not the State, the party that must prove entitlement.
• Integrity risk: names of the dead surviving till final publication leave scope for impersonation, weakening roll purity — the very object of SIR.

Where the process withstands scrutiny

• Draft publication is an interim stage, not deletion; no name may be removed without a speaking order by the ERO after enquiry and a fair opportunity, under the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 [1].
• Death-based deletion follows house-to-house verification by Booth Level Officers with repeated visits, with appeal to the District Magistrate and the Chief Electoral Officer [1].
• Officials retain such entries deliberately so documents can be collected during claims and objections [4] — an inclusion-first design that errs toward retention rather than disenfranchisement.
• The Supreme Court (27 May 2026, ADR v. ECI) held SIR to be within the ECI's statutory mandate under the RPA, 1950 and consonant with Article 324 [2].

The defect, therefore, is administrative and communicative rather than constitutional. Linking rolls to civil registration death data, publishing category definitions in plain language, and channelling notices through BLOs would convert a legally sound exercise into a demonstrably fair one — strengthening the free and fair elections that Article 324 guarantees.