MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT and Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (‘VCK’) President T. Thirumavalavan has approached the Supreme Court challenging the legality of the Election Commission of India’s Special Intensive Revision (‘SIR’) of electoral rolls in Tamil Nadu.
Filed under Article 32, the petition argues that the SIR, announced through a notification dated 27 October 2025 and scheduled to be carried out mere months before the State heads to the polls in April–May 2026, constitutes an arbitrary, exclusionary and constitutionally infirm exercise that places millions of marginalised voters at the risk of disenfranchisement. The challenge comes at a time when the Court is already seized of several petitions contesting the SIR process in Bihar, raising serious questions about the Election Commission’s powers, procedure and timing in undertaking intensive revisions of electoral rolls.
‘SIR will unduly burden Dalits, Adivasis, migrant labourers, working class’
The petition opens by situating itself against the broader democratic stakes involved. Thirumavalavan, himself a Dalit leader representing the Chidambaram constituency, asserts that the SIR is not a matter of routine administrative housekeeping; rather, its rushed and opaque implementation in Tamil Nadu threatens to unduly burden those who already confront entrenched socio-economic barriers i.e. Dalits, Adivasis, migrant labourers, working-class communities, women who relocate upon marriage, persons with disabilities and the elderly. According to him, the Commission has offered no plausible justification for initiating an intensive revision when the State completed a Special Summary Revision (‘SSR’) as recently as January 6, 2025 through which the electoral rolls were updated to reflect deaths, migrations and deletions of ineligible voters.
