Mass revision of electoral rolls must balance roll purity with the inclusion of genuine voters. Examine with reference to the recent Special Intensive Revision and the judicial mechanisms it produced.

Article 324 gives the ECI control over electoral rolls. Article 326 makes the right to vote depend on being enrolled. The Special Intensive Revision (SIR), which began in Bihar and was extended to West Bengal, showed that a "pure" roll fails if genuine voters drop out. Courts became the means of keeping the two goals in balance.

Roll purity: why mass revision is needed

• Removing ineligible entries: dead, shifted and duplicate electors weaken "one person, one vote". In West Bengal, nearly 27 lakh entries were marked ineligible and over 32 lakh were confirmed eligible under judicial review [4].
• Statutory basis: the RP Act, 1950 and the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 allow intensive revision.

Inclusion risks

• Burden of documents: migrants, the poor and women whose names changed after marriage are more likely to be flagged as "logical discrepancies".
• Backlog: more than 38 lakh voters' cases are stuck before 19 Appellate Tribunals [5].
• Delay costs the vote: the SC held that a pending appeal alone gives no right to vote. Only appeals allowed by set dates enter a supplementary roll [3].
• Problems with technology: Aadhaar-based authentication on ECINet held up judges' final orders, and the ECI now plans e-signing [5]. However, India's eSign itself runs on Aadhaar e-KYC [6].

Judicial mechanisms produced

• Judicial officers at the claims stage: citing a trust deficit, the SC (Feb 2026) directed serving and former district judges to decide claims and objections [1].
• Appellate Tribunals: 19 tribunals headed by former High Court judges, set up after an SC order on the Calcutta HC Chief Justice's recommendation [2].
• Article 142 directions: allowed appeals are added through supplementary rolls [3].

Enumeration → Draft roll → Claims (judicial officers) → Final roll
      → Appeal (19 Tribunals) → Supplementary roll

Flow of the SIR's purity–inclusion safeguards

These mechanisms restored due process, but they are ad hoc and have too little capacity for the backlog.

The SIR shows that purity and inclusion work together: a roll is only as credible as its appeal system. Steps forward:

• give the appeal process a statutory base in the RP Act, 1950
• add tribunals in line with the backlog
• accept signature methods that do not depend on Aadhaar
• publish disposal data every month
• count the date of the decision, not the upload, for supplementary rolls

This would serve the ECI's motto "No voter to be left behind" and the promise of Article 326.