"Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls seeks roll purity but risks mass disenfranchisement." Critically examine this in light of Section 21(3) of the RPA, 1950.

Section 21(3) of the RPA, 1950 lets the ECI order a special revision of any roll "at any time", for reasons to be recorded, and the existing roll stays in force until the revision is complete [1]. In ADR v. ECI (2026) the Supreme Court held SIR to be lawful and proportionate [2]. The power itself is valid. The risk of disenfranchisement comes from how SIR is carried out.

Roll purity: the case for SIR

• Citizenship condition: Section 16 bars non-citizens from the roll. The Court allowed the ECI a limited citizenship enquiry, with doubtful cases referred to the Citizenship Act authority [2].
• Bloated rolls: dead, duplicate and shifted entries enable impersonation. The safeguards include draft rolls, claims and objections, appeals to the DM and party BLAs [3].
• Systemic reach: the Court confined the Lal Babu Hussein (1995) protection to individual cases, so it does not bar a roll-wide revision [2].
• Built-in check: because reasons must be recorded, an SIR order can be reviewed by courts [1].

Disenfranchisement: where it goes too far

• Scale: the Delhi SIR flagged 47,56,722 of 1,45,10,299 electors (~32.8%). This mixes dead and duplicate voters with people who were only "absent" or did not return forms [4]. It counts who was not found, not who is ineligible.
• Migrants: a voter can be marked "untraceable" after two or three BLO visits [3]. A worker away for a month risks being tagged "permanently shifted" [4].
• Form 6 trap: making existing voters file the new-elector form forces a false declaration, which Section 31 punishes with up to one year's imprisonment [1][4]. The forms prescribed under Rule 13 are "cast in stone" [5].
• "Logical discrepancy": this category has no basis in the 1960 Rules. It was allowed only as an interim measure in West Bengal [4].
• Weak remedies: wrongly deleted Bihar voters were directed to judicial review. Notice was held to be preserved only "in substance" [2]. No independent audit has been named [3].

Way forward

• Any re-verification form should come through an amendment to the 1960 Rules under Section 28, not field instructions [1].
• Publish deletions booth by booth, split by reason, and give a personal notice and hearing for every deletion other than a death [6].
• Use Rule 21 to correct inadvertent omissions, and commission independent sample audits [5].

SIR serves the legitimate aim of a clean roll, but its methods now shift the burden of proof onto the voter. Under Article 324, the ECI should keep the presumption in favour of enrolled voters and use evidence-based, notified procedures. Then roll purity and universal adult suffrage under Article 326 can support each other.