A Supreme Court bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi has assembled to deliver its verdict on a number of petitions challenging the legality of the SIR exercise.

While allowing the Special Intensive Revision process to continue, the Supreme Court had clarified during hearings that it would separately decide the larger legal question of whether the Election Commission of India possesses the authority to undertake such an exercise in its present form.

Notably, the court did not stay or interdict the SIR process during the pendency of the case. Since then, the exercise has already been completed in Bihar, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and West Bengal, while it is currently underway in several other states, including Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Rajasthan.

Petitioners alleged that the exercise effectively amounted to an “NRC-like process”, arguing that the Election Commission was indirectly verifying citizenship — a power they contended lies exclusively with the central government.
 

The Election Commission defended the exercise, stating that Aadhaar cards and voter identity cards cannot be treated as conclusive proof of citizenship, and that the revision process was necessary to maintain the integrity of electoral rolls.

Senior advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for ADR, questioned both the timeline for completion of the exercise and the large-scale deletion of 65 lakh voters. He also sought clarity on the basis for classifying voters as dead, migrated, or registered elsewhere.

According to the SIR notification, voters whose names did not appear in the 2002 or 2003 electoral rolls were required to establish ancestral linkage with individuals whose names were present in those rolls.

As part of the SIR exercise, the Election Commission released draft electoral rolls that showed around 65 lakh names had been removed. These names were categorised as dead, migrated, duplicate, or registered in other constituencies.
 

The Supreme Court had begun final hearings in the matter on August 12 last year. During the proceedings, the court observed that inclusion and exclusion of names in electoral rolls falls within the constitutional remit of the Election Commission.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Surya Kant had reserved its verdict on January 29 on the pleas, including a petition filed by the NGO Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR).

The petitions have argued that the Election Commission does not have the authority under Article 326 of the Constitution, the Representation of the People Act, 1950, and the Rules framed under it to conduct such a large-scale revision exercise in the manner undertaken through the SIR.

Source: India Today