"The Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls shifts the burden of enrolment from the State to the elector." Critically examine this in light of the ECI's constitutional mandate.

Article 324 gives the ECI "superintendence, direction and control" over electoral rolls. Article 326 guarantees adult suffrage to every citizen not disqualified by law [1]. The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) rebuilds rolls through fresh house-to-house enumeration. Its purpose is legitimate, but its design largely makes the voter responsible for staying enrolled.

How SIR shifts the burden to the elector

• Deletion for non-response: electors who did not return enumeration forms were left off the draft roll. To get back on, they must file Form 6, the new-elector form, along with a declaration [4].
• Bypasses the shifting procedure: Form 8 exists for voters who have changed residence [2]. ECI's own norms require a BLO field verification report for each shifting deletion [3]. SIR reverses this order: it deletes first and verifies later.
• Unequal impact: migrants, tenants and daily-wage workers have the least time and fewest documents to meet deadlines.
• Moves away from state-initiated registration. UN guidance finds this model more inclusive, but warns that people get dropped after an address change [7].

Why the ECI's approach has merit

• Constitutional mandate: Article 324 makes roll accuracy the ECI's duty. Dead, duplicate and shifted entries make impersonation possible.
• Judicial backing: in May 2026 the Supreme Court upheld the Bihar SIR order and the ECI's power to scrutinise citizenship. It also directed that Aadhaar be accepted as a 12th identity document [5].
• Built-in safeguards: no name can be deleted from the draft roll without a speaking order issued after notice [6]. A post-SIR special drive sends BLOs house-to-house to enrol electors who were left out [8].

Assessment The aim is constitutional, but the method is disproportionate. Cleaning the roll requires removing a name from the old address, not treating an existing voter as new. Failing to return a form is not a ground for disqualification under Article 326 [1].

SIR pursues roll purity at the cost of inclusion. The way forward is to:

• accept Form 8 or late enumeration forms from anyone on the previous roll;
• require BLO verification before every "shifted" deletion;
• publish lists of deletions with the reason for each.

Purity and inclusion are both part of the ECI's Article 324 mandate. A roll is truly clean only when no eligible citizen is missing from it, which is the promise of universal adult franchise.