New Delhi, May 27
The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the powers of the Election Commission of India to conduct a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, saying the exercise strengthens the constitutional principle of free and fair elections. A bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant said the court could not conclude that the revision exercise was carried out merely for “administrative convenience”.“On the contrary, we hold that the electoral SIR advances the constitutional imperative of free and fair elections,” the bench observed. The ruling came on petitions challenging the Election Commission’s authority to carry out a large-scale revision of electoral rolls under Article 326 of the Constitution and provisions of the Representation of the People Act, 1950.
Several petitioners, including the NGO Association for Democratic Reforms, had argued that the exercise resembled an “NRC-like process” in which citizenship was effectively being verified — a responsibility they said belongs to the central government, not the poll body. The controversy centred around the first phase of the SIR exercise in Bihar, where voters whose names did not appear in the 2002 or 2003 electoral rolls were asked to provide proof of ancestral linkage with someone listed at that time.
The Election Commission defended the exercise, maintaining that Aadhaar cards and voter identity cards could not be treated as conclusive proof of citizenship. The poll body had earlier published a draft electoral roll that excluded around 6.5 million names following the revision process.The Supreme Court had reserved its verdict on the matter in January after hearing detailed arguments from both sides.
