“Before any representative government can count votes, it must first know whose votes may be counted.” That arresting opening line from CJI Surya Kant’s 124-page judgment in Association for Democratic Reforms vs Election Commission of India, delivered on May 27, sets an appropriately philosophical tone for one of the most consequential electoral rulings in recent memory. It is a judgment that gets the constitutional law largely right — and the ground reality almost entirely wrong. It also mistakes a demolition for a renovation.

Let me begin with the credit due.

The court has affirmed what election administrators have long known: Clean electoral rolls are not an administrative nicety but the foundation of democratic legitimacy. More than two decades had passed since Bihar’s last Special Intensive Revision (SIR). Rapid urbanisation and large-scale migration had produced rolls riddled with duplication, dead voters, and multiple recording of migrant voters. Annual Summary Revisions were addressing these issues, but problems persisted. The ECI’s decision to undertake the SIR was legally and constitutionally valid, as the SC has upheld — even if the manner of its execution was anything but.

The Court correctly holds that the SIR is traceable to Section 21(3) of the Representation of the People Act, read with Article 324, and does not conflict with the constitutional imperative of free and fair elections. More importantly, it draws an intelligent and necessary line on citizenship: The ECI can examine it, but for the limited purpose of determining inclusion or exclusion from the electoral roll. Deletion from the voter list does not........

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