Special Intensive Revision balances electoral purity against inclusion. Discuss with reference to Bihar.

Under Article 324 and Section 21 of the RP Act, 1950, the ECI ordered a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Bihar with 01.07.2025 as the qualifying date — the State's first intensive revision since 2003 [1]. Purity and inclusion are complementary aims; Bihar showed that the balance rests on procedure.

Where SIR serves electoral purity

• A roll two decades stale: Bihar's last intensive revision was in 2003, so deaths, migration and duplication accumulated unchecked [1].
• Scale of error: of 7.89 crore electors, about 65 lakh entries were flagged during enumeration — deceased, permanently shifted or untraceable, and those enrolled at more than one place [2]. Every wrongly retained name dilutes a genuine vote.
• Transparency: 243 EROs and 2,976 AEROs decided claims and objections, with no deletion by a non-speaking order [2].

Where inclusion is strained

• Proof shifts to the applicant: the Form 6 declaration ties documents to birth period — one's own document for pre-1 July 1987 births, but the applicant's plus both parents' papers for births after 2 December 2004 [3]. Every first-time voter today falls in this heaviest tier.
• Unequal burden: orphaned, single-parent and migrant households must produce records that may not exist; a non-citizen parent's passport and visa valid on the birth date is rarely retained [3].
• Mandate question: the 1987 and 2004 cut-offs originate in the Citizenship Act, 1955, administered by the Union — citizenship determination is not the ECI's task.
• Shifting rules: Phase II, across 9 States and 3 UTs [4], instead asks applicants to cite their own or parents' entry in the last SIR, whose base year differs by State [3].

Bihar's balancing devices

• Uploading the 2003 rolls online meant nearly 60% of electors needed no documents [5].
• BLO house-to-house verification, party-nominated BLAs, hearing before deletion and appeals to the DM and CEO protect existing electors — but not a fresh applicant whose Form 6 is refused [6].

Bihar suggests the two aims clash in procedure, not principle: cleaning a 22-year-old roll was overdue; loading proof of parentage onto an 18-year-old was not. Publishing each State's base roll in advance, giving rejected applications the same reasoned order and appeal as deletions, and notifying one stable declaration format would let a cleaner roll and Article 326's universal adult franchise advance together.