(This is the latest edition of the Political Line newsletter curated by Varghese K. George. The Political Line newsletter is India’s political landscape explained every week. You can subscribe here to get the newsletter in your inbox every Friday.)
While the protests demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar is petering out, there is no sign of him actually resigning. Does it mean that the mobilisation against the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls has failed? Does it mean that the Election Commission of India (ECI) and the BJP-led Central government have escaped this round of popular protests unscathed?
The clear indication is that like in the case of the NEET agitation that led to the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan, popular mobilisation has led to a significant reversal of the state policy. There are enough reasons available to argue that the SIR, for all practical purposes, has been withdrawn by the ECI in the face of protests and a renewed challenge in the Supreme Court. There is no conclusive decision in the Supreme Court, the proceedings so far signalled enough trouble for Mr. Kumar, who has made several changes in the process, accounting for public concerns. There is no declaration that the SIR has been stopped or withdrawn, as has been demanded by the protesters. However, a series of recent decisions announced by the ECI has made the SIR redundant.
This does not mean that the Centre or the ECI will not try to reintroduce the controversial aspects of the SIR in some form or other in the future.
The ongoing SIR is different from the last such exercise conducted between 2002 and 2004 as it shifted the burden of proof on individual citizens and residents of the country who were required to present documentation to prove their citizenship. The point to note here is that there is no single document of citizenship that is available with anyone in India. There were proposals for the creation of a nationwide National Register of Citizens (NRC), which has been stuck in a political stalemate for several years. Only the Union Home Ministry has the power to determine and certify the citizenship of anyone.
In the absence of such a register or a citizenship card in India, the ECI set out to test the citizenship eligibility of all residents of the country through this SIR by introducing several controversial steps into this round of SIR. If you want to know how this round of SIR is different from the SIR which was done in 2002, read this article by a former IS officer, R. Rangarajan.
Now to the five reasons why I think SIR is dead for all practical purposes, at least for now.
1) Contested declaration in Form 6 dropped
The most clear-cut sign of surrender was the ECI’s abrupt and quiet deletion of the controversial ‘Special Declaration’ from the online Form 6 registration portal on October 13-14, 2026. The ECI had unilaterally altered the statutory form to force new voters to map their lineage or prove citizenship. Critics argued the ECI had overstepped its constitutional mandate by bypassing Parliament, and now the poll body unanimously withdrew the declaration. Form 6 is now reverted to the standard, simplified format prescribed under the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960.
2) Routine special summary revision (SSR) restored
The ECI had initially paused the standard, annual special summary revision (SSR) nationwide to push through the aggressive SIR. However, on October 15, the Commission announced the immediate resumption of the routine SSR in 17 States and Union Territories. The simple registration avenue that does not involve family tree mapping will possibly allow millions to restore their voting rights.
3) State will canvas for inclusion, not look for excuse for exclusion
At its core, the SIR placed the entire burden of proof on the individual citizen, requiring voters flagged with “logical discrepancies” to physically appear before electoral officers or face deletion. Following massive public backlash over the disenfranchisement of marginalised communities, the ECI completely reversed this policy. Under the new guidelines, voters no longer have to undergo hostile physical hearings. Instead, Booth Level Officers (BLOs) are mandated to conduct door-to-door visits to collect documents and upload them.
4) A proactive ‘special drive’ for re-enlistment launched
The house-to-house SIR verification resulted in a devastating net deletion of over 13 crore names, a portion of them genuine, existing voters, sparking nationwide protests. In a clear damage-control move on September 29, the ECI ordered a massive, proactive ‘special drive’ to re-enlist wrongly deleted voters.
5) Stopping of bulk submission of Form 7
Critics and Opposition parties aggressively flagged a dangerous loophole in the SIR: political operatives were using bulk submissions of Form 7 (objection to inclusion) to systematically delete targeted voting blocs. To pacify these concerns and prevent further escalation, the ECI introduced a strict cap on the maximum number of Form 7 deletion requests an individual can submit.
All this suggests that the SIR is no longer a potent weapon in the government’s scheme to introduce a population-level citizenship test without legal backing of any kind. But it is also difficult to conclude that the current turnarounds in the implementation of the SIR would lead to a total abdication of the BJP’s strident position with regards to the so-called infiltrators and purification of the voter list. The last word on SIR may not have been said. At present, even though the death of SIR is not announced, it is certainly in a coma.
Federalism Tract: Notes on Diversity
Biryani by faith
A billboard in West Bengal’s Hooghly, featuring an image of Goddess Durga next to a pot of biryani, has sparked controversy. A BJP MLA alleged that the poster by a biryani outlet had hurt the religious sentiments of Hindus. Earlier, a poster by the Hindu Jagaran Manch, an affiliate of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), in Siliguri urged people to buy biryani only from Hindu shops. It should be noted that these controversies are emerging amid an ongoing demand to keep non-vegetarian food out of Durga Puja pandals in West Bengal.
Death of dignity
Two members of a Scheduled Caste (SC) community in Perumbali village in Tamil Nadu’s Erode district were compelled to fall at the feet of members of a backward caste, officially classified as an Other Backward Class (OBC). The conflict stems from the denial of burial rights to SCs living in the village. Following a survey, the Perundurai Tahsildar had declared the village burial ground common to all communities. Earlier, SCs had to bury their dead at Thingalur, which is 5 km away. However, when SCs went to bury a dead person at the village cemetery, the members of the OBC community in the village threatened that they would be refused work. Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) State coordinator for the western zone, P. Eswaran, alleged that the threat of denial of work if SCs used the village cemetery amounted to caste oppression.
Conversion and caste
The Supreme Court on Thursday declared that a Hindu belonging to a backward order cannot claim the same reservation benefits as a Muslim backward class member merely on conversion to Islam or other religions. It dismissed a Tamil Nadu government appeal seeking confirmation of a government order from March 2024, which provided reservation benefits to Muslim converts from Other Backward Classes, Most Backward Classes, denotified communities, and Scheduled Castes. The State’s policy was meant to create a level playing field by preserving affirmative action despite a change of religion. The court held that caste identity cannot be treated as an immutable personal attribute irrespective of a change in religious affiliation.
Muslims flagged disproportionately
An analysis of Delhi’s draft electoral rolls released during the ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) showed that Muslims, who form 13.6% of electors on Delhi’s draft roll, made up 20.3% of those flagged for “logical discrepancies” and 30% of those flagged under five reasons indicative of family size by the EC’s ERONET software. Muslims were 60% more likely to be marked for “logical discrepancies” than non-Muslims. The eight reasons for flagging under “logical discrepancies” could be broadly classified under the following four categories: ‘name mismatches with self or with parent’, ‘five reasons based on family size or children’, ‘parents marked ineligible in the last SIR’, and ‘no reasons mentioned’.
Chasing a prejudice
The demography panel set up by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has launched a portal to allow government bodies, members of the public, NGOs, and even “international organisations” to submit their input on “frequent demographic changes in the country”, preferably post-2011. The MHA said the inputs will help the panel to analyse and identify the causes of demographic changes and to recommend a well-organised and permanent operational system for the “legal, fair, and time bound identification, detention, and deportation of illegal immigrants residing in the country”.