SIR made so many eligible electors lose vote for the first time, says former CEC

1. At a Glance

• Special Intensive Revision (SIR) is the Election Commission of India's (ECI) door-to-door re-verification of electoral rolls. It checks every elector afresh instead of updating the existing roll. [2]
• Former CEC O.P. Rawat said that the current SIR is the first time since Independence that so many eligible electors have lost their voting rights. [1]
• The story also shows division inside the 3-member ECI. Two Election Commissioners objected to the SIR 14 times over 10 months. [1]
• For UPSC it links to Art. 324 (ECI's powers), the RP Act, 1950, universal adult franchise, how collegial bodies decide, and the tension between clean rolls and keeping every eligible voter on them. [1][2]

2. Why in the News

• Oct 1, 2026 (The Hindu, p. 9, Chennai edition): Former CEC O.P. Rawat criticised how the SIR has been carried out, in an exclusive interview given on Sep 30, 2026. [1]
• Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi formally objected to parts of the SIR 14 times over a 10-month period. Their objections covered: [1]
• changes to Form 6

• a new declaration on the ECINet portal asking new voters whether they, their parents or their grandparents appeared on the electoral roll of the last SIR

• Rawat's argument: the two Commissioners "had the majority". When their first objections went unheard, they should have annulled the decisions at the next meeting instead of stopping at dissent notes. [1]

• The third member is CEC Gyanesh Kumar. [1]

3. Background & Evolution

• Before 2025: Bihar's last intensive revision took place in 2003. [2]
• 2025, Bihar SIR ordered: ECI directed the SIR under Article 324 of the Constitution and Section 21 of the RP Act, 1950. The qualifying date was 01.07.2025. [2]
• 24 Jun – 25 Jul 2025: Enumeration phase. BLOs did a house-to-house survey. [2][5]
• 19 Jul 2025: About 95% of Bihar voters covered, according to ECI. [8]
• 1 Aug 2025: Draft electoral roll published in Bihar. [3]
• 1 Aug – 1 Sep 2025: Window for claims, objections and documents. Documents for 98.2% of electors had been received with 8 days still left. [4][5]
• 30 Sep 2025: Final roll published with about 7.42 crore electors. [5]
• Late 2025: Bihar Assembly elections were held on the SIR roll. ECI reported 7,45,26,858 eligible electors and "zero appeals". [6][7]
• After that: ECI extended the SIR in phases to other States, "with multiple safeguards to protect eligible voters". [9]
• 2026: Dissent inside the ECI became public, and a former CEC criticised the exercise. [1]

4. Core Static Facts

Item	Fact
Conducting body	Election Commission of India (constitutional body) [2]
Constitutional base	Article 324: superintendence, direction and control of electoral rolls and elections [2]
Statutory base	Section 21, Representation of the People Act, 1950: preparation and revision of rolls [2]
Stated objectives	Include all eligible citizens; keep out ineligible voters; make additions and deletions transparent [2]
Field machinery	BLOs do the house-to-house verification [2]
Bihar SIR administrative scale	38 district DEOs; 243 EROs; 2,976 AEROs; about 1 lakh BLOs; 1.6 lakh+ BLAs appointed by parties [5]
Bihar final roll (30 Sep 2025)	About 7.42 crore electors; 3.66 lakh ineligible removed from the draft; 21.53 lakh eligible added through Form 6 [5]
Electors eligible at Bihar polls 2025	7,45,26,858 [6]
Form 6	Application form for inclusion of a new elector (used for the 21.53 lakh additions) [5]
ECI composition (2026)	CEC Gyanesh Kumar; ECs Sukhbir Singh Sandhu, Vivek Joshi [1]
O.P. Rawat's tenure as CEC	23 Jan 2018 – 1 Dec 2018 [1]

Static constitutional facts below are not from the retrieved sources, so verify them against the Constitution text:

• Art. 326: adult suffrage (18+).
• Art. 324(2): multi-member ECI.
• Art. 325: no one may be excluded from the roll on grounds of religion, race, caste or sex.

5. Multi-Dimensional Analysis

Legal / Constitutional

• The SIR rests on Art. 324 and Sec. 21 of the RP Act, 1950. The dispute is over how it is done, not whether ECI has the power. [2][1]
• The ECINet declaration about a parent's or grandparent's presence on the last SIR roll raises a question: is an ancestry-linked proof burden on new voters consistent with universal adult franchise? [1]

Governance / Institutional

• In a multi-member commission, the majority's view should prevail. Rawat argues that dissent notes alone do not make the commission accountable. [1]
• 14 objections in 10 months points to a breakdown in collegial decision-making inside the ECI. [1]
• Transparency is one of ECI's own stated aims for the SIR, yet the internal objections came out through the media. [2][1]

Social

• Rawat's claim of exclusion of eligible electors on an unprecedented scale mostly affects people with weak documentation: migrants, the poor and first-time voters. [1]
• ECI's counter-evidence from Bihar: 21.53 lakh eligible electors added through Form 6, and "zero appeals". [5][6]

Administrative

• The exercise is huge (about 1 lakh BLOs in Bihar alone) and runs on tight timelines, with a one-month enumeration window. [5]
• Party Booth Level Agents (1.6 lakh+) act as a check built into the process. [5]

Ethical

• Two goals pull against each other. A clean roll (removing ineligible names) competes with an inclusive roll (the right to vote), and the burden of proof falls on the citizen. [2][1]

6. Recent Developments (last 12–18 months)

• 30 Sep 2025: Bihar SIR final roll published (about 7.42 crore electors). [5]
• Late 2025: Bihar Assembly election held with 7,45,26,858 eligible electors. [6][7]
• 2025–26: ECI conducted the SIR in phases across States with safeguards. [9]
• Over about 10 months to Sep 2026: ECs Sandhu and Joshi recorded 14 formal objections, covering Form 6 changes and the ECINet ancestry declaration. [1]
• 30 Sep / 1 Oct 2026: Former CEC O.P. Rawat criticised the SIR and the ECs' failure to use their majority. [1]

7. Prelims Hooks

• The SIR is conducted under Article 324 of the Constitution and Section 21 of the RP Act, 1950. [2]
• The qualifying date for the Bihar SIR was 1 July 2025. [2]
• Before 2025, Bihar's last intensive revision was in 2003. [2]
• The Bihar SIR enumeration phase ran from 24 June to 25 July 2025. [5]
• The Bihar draft roll was published on 1 August 2025. [3]
• The Bihar final roll (30 Sep 2025) had about 7.42 crore electors. [5]
• 21.53 lakh eligible electors were added to the Bihar draft through Form 6. [5]
• 3.66 lakh ineligible electors were removed from the Bihar draft roll. [5]
• Bihar has 243 EROs, one per Assembly constituency. [5]
• House-to-house verification under the SIR is done by Booth Level Officers (BLOs). [2]
• O.P. Rawat was CEC from 23 Jan 2018 to 1 Dec 2018. [1]
• ECINet is ECI's integrated digital portal. Its new SIR declaration asks about parents' or grandparents' presence on the last SIR roll. [1]
• The current ECI: CEC Gyanesh Kumar, and ECs Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi. [1]

8. What the Bihar Numbers Show When You Add Them Up

• Bihar's roll ended up about 47 lakh names smaller
• On 24 June 2025, before the SIR began, Bihar had about 7.89 crore electors [5].
• The draft roll of 1 August 2025 dropped about 65 lakh names, which left 7.24 crore [5].
• The final roll had about 7.42 crore [5]. That is roughly 47 lakh fewer than at the start, or about 6% of the roll.

• So the 21.53 lakh Form 6 additions that ECI highlights won back only about a third of the names dropped at the draft stage [5].

• The 65 lakh deletions were of three kinds, and they are not equally solid

• Dead: 22.34 lakh [11]
• Already enrolled at more than one place (duplicates): 7.01 lakh [11]

• "Permanently shifted/absent": 36.28 lakh [11]. This is the largest group by far, and the least certain.

• Why the "shifted/absent" group is the weak point

• A death or a duplicate entry can be checked against a record.
• "Absent" usually means the BLO (Booth Level Officer) did not find the person at home. It does not prove that the person lost the right to vote.
• Bihar has many seasonal migrants: people who work in other States for part of the year and come back home. A BLO who visits during the working season can mark them as "shifted".

• By July 2025, ECI itself reported more than 1 lakh Bihar voters it could not trace [14].

• The same pattern showed up across India

• As the SIR moved to other States, migration accounted for about 70% of all deletions, and northern States were hit hardest [12].
• This is where Rawat's "eligible electors lost their vote" claim is most likely to be true.

9. Why 'Zero Appeals' Does Not Prove No One Was Left Out

• You cannot appeal a deletion you never heard about
• The people most likely to be marked "absent" are the ones who were away when the BLO came, mainly migrant workers [11][12].

• They often find out only on polling day, when their name is missing and the deadline to appeal has passed.

• At first, the deletion list was not published

• The Supreme Court had to order ECI, on 14 August 2025, to publish the list of about 65 lakh excluded electors, with the reason for each exclusion [10].
• The Court also told ECI to publicise the list through newspapers, TV and radio [10].
• Only after that order was the list shared with parties at booth level and put up outside Panchayat Bhavans and polling booths [10].

• In other words, the openness ECI now points to came from a court order, not from the original design of the SIR.

• Appealing takes time, money and paperwork

• A daily-wage migrant working in another State has to travel home or deal with officials from far away.

• Few such people can do this, so a low appeal count may simply mean the process was hard to use. It is not proof that the roll is correct.

• How to read ECI's figure in an exam answer

• "Zero appeals" [6] tells you how few people challenged the roll. It does not tell you how many eligible people were left off it.
• Checking wrongful exclusion needs an independent sample survey. No such check appears in ECI's releases [5][9].

10. The Strongest Case for the SIR, and Where It Stops

• ECI's best argument: the old roll really was out of date
• Bihar had not had an intensive revision since 2003, more than 20 years earlier [2].
• The drive found 22.34 lakh dead electors and 7.01 lakh duplicate entries [11]. Nobody seriously argues that these names should stay.

• Names of dead voters and duplicate entries can be misused for fake voting. Removing them protects honest voters as well.

• The Supreme Court did not stop the exercise, but it made ECI change it

• It said it would scrap the SIR if it found anything illegal in the method [15].
• It ordered ECI to accept Aadhaar as the 12th document for inclusion, in addition to the 11 documents on ECI's list [10]. ECI then allowed excluded voters to submit Aadhaar [13].

• So the courts accepted ECI's power to clean the roll, but they corrected how it was being done.

• Where the argument stops working

• Deaths and duplicates add up to about 29 lakh names, and the SIR is justified for those.
• The contested part is the 36.28 lakh "shifted/absent" group [11]. Here a living, eligible citizen can lose their vote because of one missed house visit.
• The new ECINet question about parents' and grandparents' presence on the last SIR roll [1] adds a second hurdle: the family's record, not just the voter's own.
• A fair conclusion: the SIR's goal is sound. The dispute is about who has to prove what, and how much error is acceptable.

11. Why Two Commissioners Could Object but Not Stop It

• A dissent note records disagreement. It does not block the decision
• Sandhu and Joshi recorded 14 objections over 10 months, and the decisions went ahead anyway [1].

• Rawat's point is that two out of three members is a majority. Voting to reverse the decisions would have stopped them, while notes on file changed nothing [1].

• One likely reason: the three members are not equally protected

• Under the proviso to Art. 324(5), the CEC can be removed only in the same way as a Supreme Court judge.
• An Election Commissioner can be removed on the CEC's recommendation.
• So an EC who outvotes the CEC takes a personal risk that the CEC does not. (This is constitutional text, not from the retrieved sources, so check it against the Constitution.)

• This helps explain why the ECs put their objections on record instead of forcing a vote.

• Why it matters beyond this one case

• A multi-member commission exists so that one person cannot decide everything alone.
• If the other members can only object and never overrule, the ECI works in practice like a body with one member.
• Voters learned of the split only through a former CEC's interview in a newspaper [1]. The ECI's own processes did not make it public.

12. What Should Change Before the Next Phase

• ECI should publish booth-wise deletion lists, with reasons, in every State by default
• This worked in Bihar, but only after the Supreme Court ordered it on 14 August 2025 [10].

• It should be a standard step before any draft roll is finalised, and not depend on a court case in each State.

• ECI should require proof of new enrolment before deleting a "shifted" voter

• A duplicate is deleted only when the voter is found enrolled somewhere else [11]. The same test should apply to "shifted" names.

• Without it, a migrant can end up on no roll anywhere. Migration already drives about 70% of deletions [12].

• ECI should keep Aadhaar as an accepted document in every phase

• The Supreme Court made Aadhaar the 12th document in Bihar [10][13].

• Because Aadhaar is so widely held, keeping it on the list lowers the paperwork burden on poor and first-time voters.

• ECI should adopt a written rule for majority decisions and publish recorded dissent

• Rawat's critique shows that a 2–1 majority existed on paper but was never used [1].

• A clear rule on when the full Commission must vote, and on publishing dissent notes, would make collegial (shared) decision-making real.

• ECI or an independent body should test the final roll with a sample survey

• A check on real households would show how many eligible people were missed.
• That answers Rawat's charge with evidence, which the "zero appeals" figure [6] cannot do.

13. Anchors for Answers

• Data: Bihar roll fell from 7.89 crore (24 Jun 2025) to 7.24 crore in the draft (1 Aug 2025), then rose to about 7.42 crore in the final roll (30 Sep 2025), a net fall of about 47 lakh [5]
• Data: Reasons for the 65 lakh draft deletions: dead 22.34 lakh; shifted/absent 36.28 lakh; duplicate 7.01 lakh [11]
• Data: Migration accounts for about 70% of SIR deletions nationally, with northern States hit hardest [12]
• Law/Case: Supreme Court, Bihar SIR case: order of 14 Aug 2025 to publish the 65 lakh excluded names with reasons; Aadhaar accepted as the 12th document; judgment 2026 INSC 564 (27 May 2026) [10]
• Law/Case: Art. 324 and Sec. 21 of the RP Act, 1950 (legal basis of the SIR) [2]; Art. 324(5) proviso, which protects the CEC's tenure more strongly than the ECs' (verify against the Constitution text)

14. Mains Relevance

• GS-II:
• Constitutional bodies and their powers and functions (ECI)
• Salient features of the RP Act

• Transparency and accountability

• GS-IV:

• Institutional integrity

• Dissent and accountability in public institutions

• Possible question stems: 1. 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. 2. Recorded dissent within the Election Commission raises questions about collegial decision-making in multi-member constitutional bodies. Discuss. 3. Does placing the burden of documentary proof on voters during electoral roll revision undermine universal adult franchise? Analyse.

15. Related Topics to Study Next

• CEC and Other ECs (Appointment, Conditions of Service) Act, 2023: how Commissioners are appointed and removed, which bears on ECI's independence.
• Art. 326 and universal adult franchise: the constitutional right the SIR is said to affect.
• RP Act, 1950 (Secs 16, 21, 22): disqualification, revision and correction of rolls.
• Aadhaar–voter ID linkage (Election Laws (Amendment) Act, 2021): the other roll-cleaning tool, and the debate over which documents count as proof.
• Citizenship Act, 1955 and NRC: the overlap between proving citizenship and proving eligibility to vote.
• Delimitation: the other roll and constituency issue currently in the news.
• Bihar Assembly Election 2025: the first election held on an SIR roll. [6]

16. Common Errors / Trap Areas

• SIR is different from summary revision. A summary revision updates the existing roll every year. An intensive revision builds the roll afresh through house-to-house enumeration. [2]
• Legal base: Section 21 of the RP Act, 1950 (which deals with rolls), not the RP Act, 1951 (which deals with conduct of elections). [2]
• Form 6 is for new inclusion. Do not confuse it with forms for deletion or correction. [5]
• Bihar numbers: 7.42 crore is the final roll on 30 Sep 2025, while 7,45,26,858 is the count of eligible electors at the time of the poll. [5][6]
• O.P. Rawat's tenure is 2018 only (Jan–Dec). He is a former CEC; the current CEC is Gyanesh Kumar. [1]