The Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls pits roll purity against electoral inclusion. Critically examine with reference to Article 324 and the RP Act, 1950.

The Election Commission of India (ECI) ordered a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Bihar, the first there since 2003. It used its powers under Article 324 and Section 21 of the RP Act, 1950. The stated aim was to include every eligible citizen and exclude every ineligible one [1]. The law treats these two goals as complementary, but in practice they have clashed.

Roll purity: the case for SIR

• Legal mandate: Art. 324 gives the ECI superintendence over electoral rolls. The Supreme Court upheld the SIR as valid and proportionate under Art. 324 and Sec. 21(3) [5].
• Outdated rolls: After two decades without an intensive revision, the rolls held dead, shifted and duplicate entries, which make impersonation easier [1].
• Built-in correction: After the draft stage, 3.66 lakh ineligible names were removed and 21.53 lakh eligible electors were added through Form 6. About 1 lakh BLOs and more than 1.6 lakh party BLAs provided checks [2].

Electoral inclusion: the costs

• Net shrinkage: The roll fell from 7.89 crore to 7.24 crore in the draft, with about 65 lakh names excluded. The final roll ended at about 7.42 crore, a net loss of roughly 47 lakh [2].
• Burden of proof on the citizen: Most exclusions were for non-submission of enumeration forms [3]. This hits migrants and the poor hardest and sits uneasily with Art. 326 (universal adult franchise).
• Transparency came from the Court: The Supreme Court had to order ECI to publish the deleted names with reasons [3]. It also made Aadhaar the 12th document for identity [4].
• Institutional dissent: Election Commissioners Sandhu and Joshi objected 14 times in 10 months. One objection was to an ECINet declaration that asks about parents' or grandparents' presence on the last SIR roll. Former CEC O.P. Rawat called the exclusion of eligible electors unprecedented [6].

Way forward

• Publish booth-wise deletion lists by default, without waiting for a court order [3].
• Delete a "shifted" elector only on proof that they are enrolled elsewhere.
• Keep Aadhaar as an accepted document, and adopt a majority-decision rule within the multi-member ECI [4][6].

Overall, the SIR's purpose is constitutionally sound, and the Supreme Court has confirmed this. The dispute is about how it is done: who must prove eligibility, and how much error is acceptable. If exclusion safeguards are made as strong as the deletion drive, purity and inclusion can reinforce each other. A roll is truly "pure" only when no eligible citizen is missing from it, which is what Art. 326 promises.