Revising electoral rolls must balance purity of the roll against the risk of disenfranchisement. Critically examine this in the context of the recent Special Intensive Revision.

The Election Commission of India (ECI) ordered the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) under Article 324 and Section 21 of the RP Act, 1950. It had two aims: include every eligible citizen and exclude every ineligible one [1]. West Bengal shows that both aims are valid. So far, however, the process has served purity better than inclusion.

Purity of the roll: the case for SIR

• Long gap: Bihar's last intensive revision was in 2003 [1]. Deaths, migration and duplicate entries pile up over two decades.
• Scale: Phase II covered 9 States and 3 UTs [2]. In West Bengal, over 60 lakh names went to judicial review and about 27 lakh were found ineligible [3].
• Judicial safeguards: Judicial officers ruled on doubtful cases. After the Supreme Court's order of 10 March 2026, the ECI set up 19 Appellate Tribunals [4], creating a remedy beyond the administrative route.

Risk of disenfranchisement: the concerns

• Backlog: 22.21 lakh appeals are pending before these 19 tribunals [5], more than one lakh per tribunal.
• Unequal remedy: Form 6 re-enrolment claims must be decided within one month, but voters under adjudication are excluded from that drive [5]. A citizen who used the legal remedy now waits longer and may miss the next election, since names cannot be added after the last date for nominations.
• Equity: Long delays hit migrants, the poor and people with weak documents hardest.
• Stigma: A roll deletion is not a citizenship finding. In the Assam NRC case, MHA clarified that non-inclusion does not by itself make a person a foreigner [6].

Assessment and way forward

• The ECI is right that a case under adjudication should not be reopened through a parallel route. But that principle supports having one route, not a slow one.
• Time-bound disposal: Set a fixed deadline and add more benches. Assam, for comparison, extended the appeal window to 120 days [6].
• Prioritise appeals from voters already deleted from the roll.
• Transparency: Publish tribunal-wise data on pending and decided appeals, and clear rules on withdrawing an appeal to apply through Form 6.

Overall, the SIR has made the roll cleaner, but slow appeals risk shutting out genuine voters. Time-bound tribunals, priority for deleted voters and open data can deliver a roll that is both accurate and inclusive, in keeping with the promise of universal adult suffrage under Article 326.