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Supreme Court upholds Election Commission’s power to conduct Special Intensive Revision of voter roll
May-27-2026

The Supreme Court (SC) upheld the Election Commission’s power to conduct a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter rolls and said the exercise ‘breathes life’ into the constitutional mandate for fair elections.

A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi held that the exercise advances the ‘constitutional imperative of free and fair elections.’ The court further held that the poll panel was empowered under Article 324 of the Constitution and Section 21(3) of the Representation of the People Act (RPA) to carry out special revisions.

The pleas challenging SIR claimed that the Election Commission does not have powers under Article 326 of the Constitution, the Representation of the People Act, 1950 and the Rules made under it to carry out SIR in a larger form. The petitioners also alleged that the electoral rolls revision was an ‘NRC-like process’ where the poll body was verifying citizenship, a power which vests in the central government.

The petitions against the exercise had been filed by the Association for Democratic Reforms, political activist Yogendra Yadav, and several Opposition politicians, including Mahua Moitra, Manoj Jha, KC Venugopal and Supriya Sule, 

The Bench headed by CJI Surya Kant had reserved its judgment on January 29 after conducting extensive hearings in the matter. The SIR in Bihar was conducted in the first phase of the exercise.

The top court commenced final arguments in the matter on August 12 last year, when it observed that inclusion or exclusion of names in the electoral rolls falls within the constitutional remit of the Election Commission. The poll authority had come out with the names of 65 lakh people who were removed from the draft electoral rolls published as part of the SIR exercise.

According to the SIR notification, voters who were not present in the 2002 or 2003 rolls had to show ancestral linkage with someone present in the rolls then. Defending the SIR exercise, the EC maintained that Aadhaar and voter identity cards cannot be treated as conclusive proof of citizenship.
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