'Mobility should not translate into disenfranchisement.' Analyse this statement in the context of internal migration and electoral roll revision processes in India.

Census 2011 counted 45.6 crore migrants, of whom 99% moved within India [3]. Yet the franchise remains anchored to "ordinary residence", so every roll revision — presently the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) under Article 324 and Section 21(3) of the RP Act, 1950 [1] — must purify rolls without penalising those who move.

Why mobility collides with the electoral roll

• India records about 5.4 crore inter-state migrants [3], while the EAC-PM's internal migration study puts total domestic migrants near 40 crore, much of it short-term and circular and hence poorly captured by any single enumeration [4].
• SIR's house-to-house verification classifies non-traceable electors as Absent or Shifted; in Karnataka's SIR-2026 the draft roll carried 4.46 crore electors against 5.54 crore earlier, with roughly 1.08 crore placed in the ASDDO category [2].
• Linking entries to a distant reference roll (2002 for Karnataka) is hardest precisely for those who have since migrated, and for the poor and elderly lacking documents [2].

The competing, legitimate demand

• A migrant may be enrolled at both origin and destination; removing dead, duplicate and shifted entries protects "one person, one vote" and is the ECI's statutory duty [1].

Where the process strains due process

• A compressed claims-and-objections window (24 August–23 September 2026, final roll 27 October 2026) demands physical presence from those who are, by definition, absent [2].
• Notice asymmetry: electors flagged for discrepancies are served notices, while silently "shifted" names risk deletion without effective intimation [2].
• In the Bihar SIR, the Supreme Court directed acceptance of Aadhaar as an additional identity document [5], signalling that verification must not become an exclusion filter.

Purification and inclusion are therefore complementary, not rival, goals. Longer objection windows, mandatory individual notice before deletion, portability of registration and progress on remote voting for migrants would let the ECI cleanse rolls while honouring Article 326's promise of universal adult franchise.