The ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls has produced an unusual situation. Several well-known people including sportsmens, senior politicians, bureaucrats, lawyers, judges have figured in the list of persons issued SIR notices. The reasons mentioned include “Self Name Mismatch”, “Parent Name Mismatch” and “Unmapped with Last SIR”.
If persons whose public identity, residence and electoral history are readily verifiable can be flagged because their present electoral particulars do not match or map with a 2002 intensive revision record, it raises a serious question about the limitations of using an old electoral record as the basis for linking or mapping, when that record itself contains many discrepancies and then using it to map the present electoral roll also raises serious concerns. It provides a useful test of the reliability and accuracy of the system.
This distinction is important. The question is whether the 2002 database is being used as a tool for verification or whether failure to match with that database is itself being treated as a ground for suspicion about the Citizenship of a voter. These are two very different things. The first is a legitimate verification exercise. The second can become problematic if the system-generated discrepancy is treated as the conclusion rather than as the starting point of an inquiry.
The Telangana scenario
The Telangana SIR exercise has placed 32,36,659 electors in the category of “unmapped with SIR 2002”, while another 60,50,918 electors have been identified with various anomalies. Together, these two categories cover 92,87,577 electors. The reported discrepancies include differences in names, parent names, relationship types and age details. Such discrepancies may be useful for identifying records that require verification, but they are, at the first stage, only data discrepancies. They are not by themselves evidence of non- citizenship.
This distinction becomes particularly important in using regional/local languages because names are routinely written and transliterated differently from local language to English. A person's name can have several English spellings. Initials may be expanded or omitted. The order of names may change. A person may have shifted residence and moved from one constituency to another. Polling stations and constituency boundaries may also have changed. Women may appear under different relational descriptions in different electoral records. Parents may have died, migrated or may not have been registered at the same place. Many of today's voters were not even eligible voters in 2002 or not recorded, while some were not born at that time. The 2002 electoral roll is therefore an electoral record belonging to a particular point in time. It is not a citizenship register.
The ECI’s own disclaimer
The Election Commission's own SIR search system recognises that spelling variations may exist between the earlier SIR records and present electoral records and advises users to try different spelling variations. The system also states that the 2002/2003 data have been hosted as received from the respective State Chief Electoral Officer, without modification. This itself shows why a failure to establish a match should be approached with caution. If the underlying historical data contain variations, the absence of an automated match cannot automatically be treated as evidence of an adverse fact about the present voter.
What the Supreme Court says about procedural safeguards
The Supreme Court had already addressed a closely related issue more than three decades ago in Lal Babu Hussain & Ors. v. Electoral Registration Officer & Ors., (1995) 3 SCC 100; AIR 1995 SC 1189. The case concerned the questioning of the citizenship of persons whose names were already appearing in electoral rolls. In those proceedings, police verification reports were relied upon to raise doubts about the citizenship of voters. The Supreme Court found that the Electoral Registration Officer had placed excessive reliance on the police report without properly examining the evidence produced by the affected persons. The Court observed that the officer had “totally abdicated” his function in favour of what the police had done during verification.
A police report in 1995 and a computer-generated notice for discrepancy in 2026 are obviously not the same thing. But the legal principle is relevant because in both situations there is a risk that material generated outside the final decision-making process may be treated as conclusive without the statutory authority independently examining what it actually means.
The Supreme Court in Lal Babu Hussain laid down important safeguards for such an inquiry. It held that where the citizenship of a person whose name is already on the electoral roll is questioned, the person must be told why the doubt has arisen. The material forming the basis of the suspicion must be disclosed so that the affected person can properly respond to it. The Court observed that unless the basis for the doubt is disclosed, the person cannot effectively explain the circumstances responsible for that doubt.
The Court further held that the inquiry is quasi-judicial in nature and the material on which the officer proposes to rely must be disclosed, and the person must be given a reasonable opportunity to rebut it. Most importantly, the Supreme Court directed that “the Officer inquiring into the matter must apply his mind independently to the material placed before him” and must pass an appropriate speaking order after considering the Constitution, the Citizenship Act and other relevant legal provisions.
When data mismatches bypass procedural safeguards
These safeguards are important in the present SIR process because a system-generated notice should not become a substitute for the statutory enquiry. The use of technology itself is not the problem. In a revision covering crores of electoral entries, technology can help identify possible discrepancies and make the process more manageable. The difficulty begins when the output of the system is treated as the conclusion of the enquiry rather than as a trigger for further verification.
The ECI itself describes ERONET as a system for electoral-roll management which provides reports and supports the work of electoral authorities. The existence of such a system does not alter the statutory role of the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO). Technology can assist the officer. It cannot exercise the officer's quasi-judicial function.
This becomes particularly important in relation to the classification “Unmapped with Last SIR”. The word “unmapped” should not be allowed to acquire a meaning which it does not have. An elector may be unmapped because the present electoral entry could not be linked through the available database to an entry in the 2002 roll. That does not necessarily mean that the person has no electoral history. It certainly does not, by itself, establish that the person is not an Indian citizen.
Not mapped is not the same as not enrolled. And not found in the 2002 roll is not the same as not being an Indian citizen.
The fact that prominent persons have been flagged provides a useful illustration of this problem. The published notice list includes people whose identities are well known and whose public records are extensive. Some have been classified as “Unmapped with Last SIR”, while others have been flagged for name or parent-name mismatches.
This has much greater significance for ordinary citizens. A well-known public figure may have access to lawyers, records, officials and other resources to explain a discrepancy. A poor worker, elderly person, migrant, woman who has changed her address after marriage, or a person with limited literacy may not even know what “unmapped” means or where to obtain a 2002 electoral roll. If the burden of the entire investigation is shifted to such voters, a technical discrepancy can become a serious barrier to retaining their electoral rights.
The Supreme Court's 2026 judgment in Association for Democratic Reforms & Ors. v. Election Commission of India, needs to be considered alongside Lal Babu Hussain. The Court upheld the legality of the Special Intensive Revision process and recognised the Election Commission's power to undertake intensive verification of electoral rolls. At the same time, the judgment discusses the procedural safeguards applicable where an Electoral Registration Officer entertains doubt about a person's eligibility.
The 2026 judgment recognised that an existing electoral entry carries a presumption of validity, though that presumption is rebuttable. The existence of a previous electoral entry does not prevent verification, but it is a relevant fact which has to be considered. The Court also dealt with the role of the ERO, field verification, documentary material, objections and the requirement of a reasoned decision.
The question of transparency
There is also a larger question of transparency. If a computer system is being used to identify discrepancies and lead to determine citizenship on such a large scale, the Election Commission should be able to explain how the system works. The Commission should disclose the precise criteria used to identify “logical discrepancies", the matching methodology used for names and age, the treatment of spelling and transliteration variations, the data fields used for matching and the databases against which the present records are compared. Such information would allow citizens and independent observers to understand whether the system is effectively identifying genuine problems or generating a large number of false positives which then have to be corrected manually.
The Commission should also ensure that the records of individual cases show the independent enquiry undertaken by the ERO. Where an elector's eligibility is questioned, the record should make clear what material was considered, what verification was conducted, what explanation was given by the elector and why the ERO accepted or rejected that explanation. This is particularly important because the final decision is not made by the software. It is made by the statutory authority.
The Supreme Court's jurisprudence provides an important balance. The 2026 judgment recognises the Election Commission's power to conduct an intensive verification exercise. Lal Babu Hussain makes clear that the resulting enquiry must nevertheless be fair, evidence-based and independently conducted.
The two principles can operate together. They do not mean that an existing voter can never be questioned. Nor do they mean that every person whose present record does not match an old database should automatically be treated as suspect. They require a genuine enquiry in which the authority identifies the reason for the doubt, discloses the relevant material, gives the affected person a reasonable opportunity to respond, considers the evidence and takes an independent and reasoned decision.
A computer-generated discrepancy notice can assist the electoral process if it merely serves as the starting point for a genuine enquiry. However, serious issues arise if the discrepancy itself is treated as ground for suspecting citizenship, forcing the voter to disprove unexplained automated notices and conclusions.
In such a scenario, key procedural safeguards recognized by the Supreme Court become meaningless. This includes the protections established in Lal Babu Hussain v. Electoral Registration Officer and Association for Democratic Reforms & Ors. v. Election Commission of India. It also undermines the framework under Rule 21A of the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, which governs electoral roll maintenance. Ultimately, it reduces the Electoral Registration Officer’s (ERO) quasi-judicial duty - spanning inclusion, deletion, enquiry, and notice - to a mere formality.
SQ Masood is a social activist based in Hyderabad. Views expressed are the author’s own.