Transparency in the exercise of quasi-judicial/administrative discretion is a facet of natural justice. Discuss with reference to the Election Commission's classification of electors during SIR.

Natural justice demands not only that a person be heard, but that they first be told the ground against them. Transparency is therefore intrinsic, not incidental, to administrative discretion — a principle sharply tested by the Election Commission's classification of electors during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR).

Why transparency is a facet of natural justice

• Audi alteram partem is hollow without disclosure: a hearing on an undisclosed ground is only half the rule.
• Section 22, RP Act 1950 permits deletion only after inquiry and a reasonable opportunity; Section 24 gives an appeal to the District Magistrate [1].
• The Supreme Court (27 May 2026), while upholding SIR under Article 324, held that "reasons to be recorded" is a substantive safeguard keeping seemingly untrammelled power open to judicial scrutiny [2].
• ECI's own orders bar deletion without a hearing and a speaking order, appealable to the DM and CEO [3].

Where SIR classification falls short

• In Delhi, 33,12,919 of 97,53,577 draft electors (33.96%) received notices — 13,79,785 for "no mapping", 19,33,134 for "logical discrepancies"; over 47 lakh names already stand deleted [4].
• A category is not a reason: a spelling error, a missing house number and a suspected ineligible entry sit inside one undefined label, leaving the voter unable to reply or appeal meaningfully.
• Migrants and tenants, whom door-to-door mapping systematically misses, bear the heaviest burden — and non-reply is read as ineligibility.

Corrective direction

• The Supreme Court (January 2026) directed the ECI to display names listed under "logical discrepancies" at panchayat and block offices in West Bengal, with facility to file documents locally [5] — a template for EPIC-searchable public disclosure.
• Nationally, roughly 6.56 crore names were removed from draft rolls across nine States and three UTs [6], making reasoned, published grounds indispensable.

Pure rolls and inclusive rolls are complementary, not rival, goals. Disclosing the precise ground, a fixed reply window and swift restoration of wrongly deleted names would convert ECI's existing safeguards into lived protection, fulfilling both Article 324's mandate and the constitutional promise of universal adult franchise.