Nine months after the Election Commission of India (ECI) announced the contentious Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls ahead of Bihar’s November 2025 assembly elections, and six months after the polls ended, the Supreme Court on Wednesday (May 27) upheld the commission’s power to conduct the exercise. The three-month-long revision required all existing voters not on the 2003 rolls to provide documentation proof of their citizenship and that of their parents. 

While the Election Commission faced criticism for introducing the National Register of Citizens (NRC) through the backdoor, the Supreme Court ruled the poll body cannot be the final determinant of citizenship. It said the ECI being “confined to electoral purposes, cannot assume finality on the question of citizenship.” The court further directed the commission to forward, within four weeks, the names of persons deleted from electoral rolls on grounds of doubtful citizenship to the Union government. 

Despite the court’s ruling that citizenship determinations lie ultimately with the Union government rather than the ECI, the judgement has raised concerns about how the disenfranchisement of over five crore voters now carries the Supreme Court’s stamp of approval, how the order will be used to implement the centre’s “detect, delete, deport” policy, and why the court left more questions unanswered than it resolved. 

“To me it sounds like the Additional District Magistrate (ADM) Jabalpur case which happened during the Emergency, which legalised taking away people’s right to life. Now the Supreme Court has legalised taking away the right to vote,” said Yogendra Yadav, national convenor of Bharat Jodo Abhiyan and a petitioner in the case, in a video discussion on The Wire.

By the time the Supreme Court delivered its verdict on Wednesday (May 27), assembly polls in Bihar had already concluded, a new government was in place and the state’s electorate had shrunk by about 6%, with 47 lakh fewer voters than before the revision. The ECI has since conducted the SIR in 12 states and union territories, deleting over five crore people from the rolls, with all voters required to map themselves to the 2002 electoral rolls. In West Bengal, where a new government also came to power after elections held during this period, about 27 lakh people were unable to vote in April as their appeals were pending before judicial tribunals. The exercise will now get underway in the remaining states and union territories.

“The final........

© The Wire