"Purification of electoral rolls must not come at the cost of universal adult franchise." Critically examine this statement in the context of the Special Intensive Revision.

Article 326 guarantees universal adult franchise to every citizen aged 18 or above. Article 324 makes the Election Commission of India (ECI) responsible for superintending elections, which includes keeping electoral rolls accurate [1]. The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) began in Bihar in 2025 and has now been extended to Delhi. It tests whether these two goals can coexist. The statement is largely valid.

Purification: a legitimate duty

• Roll integrity: Entries for dead, shifted and duplicate voters distort electoral mandates. On 27 May 2026 the Supreme Court upheld the SIR under Article 324 and Section 21(3) of the RP Act, 1950 [3].
• Presumption, not immunity: Being on the roll creates only a rebuttable presumption of eligibility, so the ECI may re-verify entries [3].
• Safeguards retained: The Court held that Rule 21A protections (notice, hearing and reasoned orders) were preserved "in substance". Doubtful citizenship cases go to the competent authority under the Citizenship Act [3].

Franchise at risk: the method

• Burden reversal: Lal Babu Hussein (1995) bars deleting a listed elector without due inquiry [2]. The SIR instead asks existing voters to prove their eligibility with documents.
• Irrelevant criteria: Delhi's "logical discrepancy" flags rely on family size, a parent's age at the elector's birth and name spelling. None of these tests a statutory condition of eligibility: citizenship, age, ordinary residence and not being disqualified [4].
• Indirect discrimination: Family size tracks poverty and schooling. With India's total fertility rate now at 2.0 [5], these flags mainly catch older and poorer electors. Reports that the flags fall more heavily on minorities raise concerns under Articles 14 and 15.
• Asymmetric harm: A ghost entry left on the roll is one error. A genuine voter who is deleted loses a vote that cannot be cast again. Migrants and people without documents bear this cost most.

Assessment

• When the Court upheld the power to revise rolls [3], it did not approve every method used. Purification is valid in its aim. It becomes disproportionate when the screening criteria have no link to eligibility.

Purification and franchise go together, because a roll that excludes genuine citizens is not a clean roll. The ECI should:

• limit flags to the statutory conditions;
• publish its flag rules and flag rates;
• guarantee notice and a hearing before any deletion;
• accept a wide range of documents, including online claims.

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