Large-scale revisions of electoral rolls must balance purity of the rolls against the right to vote. Discuss with reference to the Special Intensive Revision.

Article 326 guarantees universal adult franchise, and Article 324 makes the Election Commission of India (ECI) responsible for preparing electoral rolls. The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) started in Bihar in June 2025 [1] and has since been extended across States. It shows the tension well: a clean roll protects free elections, but a careless clean-up can disenfranchise real voters.

Case for purity of rolls

• Accuracy of the rolls: The ECI pointed to urbanisation, migration and years of piecemeal additions and deletions, which cause duplicate and wrong entries [2].
• Legal backing: In May 2026 the Supreme Court upheld the SIR under Art. 324 and the RP Act, 1950. It held that the SIR "advances the Constitutional imperative of free and fair elections" [2].
• Integrity: Removing dead, shifted and duplicate electors closes the door to impersonation and bogus voting.

Risks to the right to vote

• Burden of proof: Asking existing electors to prove eligibility with documents puts the poor, migrants, women and people without papers at a disadvantage.
• Due process: In Lal Babu Hussein (1995), the SC held that people already on the roll cannot be dropped on suspicion alone. The registration officer must give due weight to their earlier enrolment [4].
• Scale and speed: Large exclusions from draft rolls have led to protests and fresh petitions. Tight deadlines leave little time for verification.
• Transparency: Supporting documents are visible only to election officials, for privacy reasons [1]. This makes it hard for the public to check deletions.

Striking the balance

• Built-in safeguards: The ECI requires house-to-house verification with repeated visits, recorded reasons for each deletion, and a claims-and-objections window (Forms 6, 7, 8) during which wrongly deleted names are restored [3].
• Reading in due process: Every deletion should come with a show-cause notice, an appeal and a clear statement that dropping a name from the roll does not decide citizenship.
• Inclusion drives: The ECI should run follow-up enrolment drives for left-out and first-time voters, use BLOs actively, and publish deletion data by booth.

A roll is legitimate only if it is both pure and complete. The SIR is legally valid, but its credibility depends on procedure. Fair notice, easy ways to get a name restored, and inclusion-first outreach would protect both purity and the franchise, in line with SDG 16.7 (inclusive, participatory decision-making) and the basic-structure promise of free and fair elections.