The Election Commission of India (ECI)’s announcement of a special summary revision of electoral rolls in 14 States and three Union Territories is, on the face of it, a routine exercise. This annual exercise to enrol new electors was stalled last year due to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, and resumes with January 1, 2027 as the qualifying date. Seen alongside what is simultaneously going on, however, the exercise is a corrective to the missteps in the SIR. The ECI is also conducting a “special drive” to re-enrol those “left out”, using the original Form 6 without the ancestry declaration. It has capped Form 7 objections amid reports of bulk filings in several States and will release searchable electoral rolls in text PDFs to parties and candidates. Together, these measures add up to an implicit admission about the severe flaws in the SIR. The drive is the most telling. By dispensing with mapping to older rolls and logical-discrepancy checks, it concedes that the SIR’s insistence on them was unnecessary. For States that are going to polls early next year — Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Uttarakhand – this is a welcome opportunity to repair the truncated rolls prepared by the SIR. Those wrongly deleted can now be re-enrolled, and newly eligible electors can be added, without recourse to “logical discrepancy” checks or quasi-citizenship tests. The ECI must report re-enrolments (after deletion) separately from fresh enrolments and the special drive’s house-to-house visits must ensure that the burden of re-enrolment does not fall on the electors again.
For States that have already voted on the basis of SIR rolls, however, a number of questions remain. In West Bengal, appellate tribunals have disposed of barely 3% of the 38 lakh appeals, 22 lakh of them by deleted electors, and restored the electors in 93% of the cases decided. The ECI has yet to say whether these appellants can also use the new drive or what becomes of the tribunals. In States such as Bihar, where the gender ratio fell from 907 in the 2024 Lok Sabha rolls to 892 in the SIR rolls, young married women who were struck off must be allowed the opportunity to re-enrol. The Supreme Court of India, which upheld the SIR in May and is now hearing petitions concerning West Bengal, Delhi and the Commission’s conduct, should ensure that genuine voters are reinstated on the electoral rolls. The ECI’s 2002-03 guidelines show that a revision need not shift the burden on to the elector. Any future intensive revision must revert to that model. The corrective steps owe much to the sustained protests against the SIR. But they are not enough for accountability. The two Election Commissioners objected on record to decisions taken by the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) of India, and their questions remain unanswered. The appointment process laid down in Anoop Baranwal, which the government got overturned in Parliament in 2023 and on which a two-judge Bench delivered a split verdict last month, must also be settled. And the official who presided over the flawed process, CEC Gyanesh Kumar, must resign.
Published - October 17, 2026 12:20 am IST