"India's success with digital public infrastructure has not translated into inclusive electoral roll management." Critically examine this with reference to the Special Intensive Revision.

India built its digital public infrastructure (DPI), including Aadhaar, UPI and DigiLocker, over several years and designed it to include everyone. The 2025-26 Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls runs on a centralised platform at a scale never tried before, and it has not matched that record. The statement is largely valid, but only partly.

Where DPI lessons were not applied

• Too much load on too few people: Phase III alone covers 36.73 crore electors through 3.94 lakh Booth Level Officers (BLOs). That is about 930 voters per officer, and every form depends on that one officer's upload [1].
• Rules lagging behind the law: Section 23(4) of the RP Act, 1950 already lists Aadhaar as proof of identity. Yet in Bihar it became the 12th accepted document only after a Supreme Court order of 8 September 2025, when the draft roll had already been published [2].
• Software as the rulebook: Field reports of server failures, data mismatches and repeated state-by-state deadline extensions suggest the platform's rules kept changing before any manual was published. UPI, by contrast, runs on open, published specifications.
• Voters must prove eligibility: Bihar's roll fell from 7.89 crore to about 7.42 crore voters [3]. No public breakdown separates genuine removals from eligible voters who could not complete the process. That kind of unexplained exclusion is what DPI audit trails are meant to prevent.
• Digital divide: Migrants, the elderly and voters with low literacy have to rely on helpers. This weakens the universal adult franchise under Article 326.

Why the statement is only partly true

• The aim is legitimate: Rolls do contain dead, shifted and duplicate voters. The Supreme Court (2026 INSC 564) upheld the SIR as within the ECI's legal powers [2].
• Safeguards exist: Names are deleted only after a BLO checks them, and voters can file claims and objections through Forms 6, 7 and 8 [4].
• Phasing and correction: Two earlier phases covered 13 States/UTs (about 59 crore voters) before Phase III began [1]. The court-ordered acceptance of Aadhaar [2] shows the process can adapt, even if late.
• Political parties take part: 3.42 lakh Booth Level Agents (BLAs) appointed by parties act as a check on the field process [1].

The SIR's weakness lies in its design more than its intent: a process central to democracy was digitised without the step-by-step testing and openness that DPI was built with. The ECI should:

• issue every platform change as a dated order linked to a software version;
• publish deletion figures for each booth, split by category;
• extend deadlines automatically for each day the server is recorded as down.

Run this way, the SIR can deliver the clean rolls that Article 324 requires while keeping universal franchise at its centre.