THE SUPREME COURT on Tuesday was told that the Special Intensive Revision (‘SIR’) of the electoral rolls by the Election Commission of India, starting with Bihar and now extended to 12 States and the Union Territories, cannot include determination of the citizenship which effectively amounts to an indirect National Register of Citizens (‘NRC’) without the nod of the parliament.
Resuming his unconcluded argument from Friday, Senior Advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, appearing for one of the petitioners, told the Bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi that the ECI was exceeding its constitutional mandate by turning the electoral roll revision into a citizenship determination process.
Singhvi argued that the “determination of citizenship lies exclusively with the Central government under Sections 8 and 9 of the Citizenship Act or with the courts and Foreigners Tribunals,” and not with ECI acting through Booth Level Officers (‘BLOs’).
He argued that by asking Electoral Registration Officers to scrutinise citizenship documents, mark suspected non-citizens and report them to the Home Department, “the Election Commission has acted ultra vires the Constitution and the Citizenship Act… This breaches statutory limits and raises concerns of indirect NRC without parliamentary sanction.”
Singhvi stated that the SIR has inverted the logic of voter registration. “The original list becomes a presumptive temporary list… I have to prove that I am a citizen. The burden is reversed,” he said, adding that constituency-wise reasons under Section 21(3) of the Representation of the People Act were mandatory and could not be replaced by generic grounds such as urbanisation and migration.
Advocate Vrinda Grover, appearing for another petitioner, argued that the SIR framework and its declaration form were designed to exclude. She pointed out that large numbers of women who appeared on the January 2025 rolls had disappeared from the draft rolls updated under SIR. “This happened in the last six months and the reason can no longer be anything else than SIR,” she said, calling the scale of deletions “disturbing”.
Grover argued that the SIR amounts to the ECI “arrogating to itself powers never contemplated in the law” and straying into the legislative domain.
Advocate Prashant Bhushan told the Court that the present SIR bears no resemblance to earlier limited revisions. “Today it is a de novo preparation. Why this hurry? Why is it leading to a situation where 30 BLOs have committed suicide?” he asked.
Bhushan said that public perception of the poll panel had deteriorated. “We cannot shut our eyes to the fact that a lot of people are viewing the Election Commission as a despot,” prompting CJI Kant to caution against sweeping assertions unsupported by pleadings.
Bhushan also referred to a Reporters’ Collective investigation that claimed more than five lakh duplicate entries persisted even after the Bihar SIR.
The Court is hearing petitions filed by political parties, NGOs and individuals challenging the legality of SIR in states including Bihar, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Kerala, questioning whether the exercise is compatible with constitutional guarantees under Articles 14, 21, 325 and 326.
The hearing will resume on December 4.
