It is a welcome measure that the Karnataka Cabinet has decided to ask the state Law Department to study the proposed Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, given the lakhs or crores of voters’ names that are getting deleted in the states where the exercise has been conducted.
However, critics drawing attention to deletions of voters’ names through the SIR need to substantiate with evidence whether the deletions were caused by the use of software by the ECI, which bypasses the Electoral Registration Officers (EROs), or by the filing of false Form 7s, or whether these were merely the result of removing the errors in the electoral rolls. Mere criticism without supporting evidence may lead to a lack of credibility.
That the current system of preparing electoral rolls is resulting in lakhs of names of dead persons, shifted voters, and duplicate entries being included in the electoral rolls is a historic reality. In its June 24, 2025, order justifying the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), the Election Commission of India (ECI) stated that 20 years of rapid urbanisation and migration have led to widespread duplicate entries in the electoral rolls. The Commission concluded that the “the situation warrants an intensive verification drive to verify each person before enrolment as a voter.”
Given that the electoral roll is a mess across all constituencies and the roll is emerging with the same mess even after the SIR, as evidenced in Bihar, where should the effort lie? Should the effort be to set the system right first, as the very manner of creating the electoral roll is faulty? The system should enable automatic addition of births and deletion of deaths, remove duplicate names and prevent bulk inclusions and deletions just before elections. But there is hardly a demand for bringing such a change in the system.
Based on the SIR conducted in Tamil Nadu, a civil Writ Petition (1072 of 2025), filed in the Supreme Court by Lt Col AK Antony (Retd), is questioning the procedures being followed by the SIR.
The petition states that the nationwide SIR exercise is “considered unconstitutional and ultra vires the Representation of People Act, 1950, Registration of Electors Rules (RER), 1960 and ECI’s own Manual on Electoral Rolls, 2023.” It demands that if at all this exercise is allowed to be continued, it should be in the manner prescribed in the various Acts, Rules and Manuals.
Invoking Rule 25 of the RER, the petition sought that the ‘intensive revision’ should involve a fresh enumeration of all voters through a door-to-door survey, without reliance on an earlier roll. But though the SIR is being called an intensive revision, it is being based on an earlier roll and not through a fresh door-to-door enumeration, which makes it a summary revision and not an intensive revision, the petition says.
The petition further notes that the Draft Electoral Rolls have not been arranged in the sequence of house numbers, as mandatorily required under Rule 6 of the RER. “Such non-compliance renders it virtually impossible for any stakeholder or vigilant citizen to verify the rolls or to identify and object to any wrongful inclusion, deletion, or omission of names,” it says.
The Enumeration Forms being handed out by BLOs during the SIR exercise do not contain the house address and, in many cases, even the house number, the petition points out. The said forms are generated based solely on the individual’s name and the Election Photo Identity Card (EPIC) number. The BLOs were neither required nor enabled to verify whether such persons were, in fact, ordinary residents of the said places. The Enumeration Form is given at the old address, where their name is already included, and not at the new address they have shifted to.
In contrast, the advantage of a fresh exercise is that it will not replicate the existing errors in the rolls and will not lead to inclusion and exclusion errors that are happening on a massive scale through the SIR. The fresh exercise requires the prescribed Form 4 to be filled and not the Enumeration Form to be filled.
Form 4 ensures the inclusion of everyone who is currently resident in the polling booth area, including fresh entrants. Even temporary migrants who wish their names to be retained at their place of ordinary residence will be enumerated in Form 4 and find a place in the draft roll. Those who have shifted will automatically get removed because of the door-to-door nature of this exercise.
But by basing the SIR on an earlier roll, the names of those who have shifted will get replicated, while those who have moved in newly will not find a mention.
All those who get excluded will have to fill out Form 6, and migrants will have to rush back to fill out the Enumeration Forms. Their names will not be included if they do not return the Enumeration Forms. This causes great hardship for rural labourers who migrate to the cities for work.
The petition claims that the names of those who have applied afresh in Form 6 are not called for any inquiry or hearing. Notice for the hearing is issued to only those from whom the Enumeration Forms were received.
The mapping exercise between the current and earlier roll undertaken by the SIR, and fresh reasons questioning age differences between grandparents, parents and children have given rise to crores of ‘logical discrepancies’ which have no precedents. These are likely to cause crores of deletions if not resolved. The short time given for the whole exercise of conducting hearings for the crores against whom some discrepancy is noted has no logic whatsoever.
If the fresh door-to-door exercise had been followed, there would have been no need for a mapping exercise. It is commendable that the Karnataka government has asked the CEO to adopt a house-to-house survey, street-wise, which corresponds with a fresh exercise.
Kathyayini Chamaraj is the Executive Trustee of CIVIC-Bangalore and Karnataka State Coordinator of the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR). Views expressed here are the author’s own.