3 months ago
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In the archetypal week of February 2026, successful an unprecedented event, the Chief Minister of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee, appeared earlier the Supreme Court of India successful the ongoing hearings astir the behaviour of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls, which has been taking spot successful aggregate States crossed India.
The Chief Minister’s arguments were focused connected definite procedural infirmities that were causing hardship to the residents of her State. Her involution led to the Court passing a slew of directions connected February 9, 2026, ostensibly seeking to mitigate immoderate of these hardships. However, successful the people of the hearing, the Court besides made a statement: that nary impediment to the SIR would beryllium allowed crossed immoderate of the States.
Core law situation not decided
This connection is baffling, due to the fact that successful making it, the Court appears to person pre-judged the astir cardinal contented earlier it — an contented that goes to the bosom of the Court’s ain relation arsenic the superior organ of law adjudication. Challenges to the SIR were archetypal filed earlier the Court successful July, erstwhile it was announced for the State of Bihar.
Among different things, these petitions questioned the constitutionality of the SIR itself. Months person passed, with SIRs announced successful aggregate States, and the challenges person multiplied. The Bihar predetermination has travel and gone (November 2025), with the Bihar SIR efficaciously having go a fait accompli. The Court has held aggregate hearings, wherever it has, successful effect, played the relation of an administrator, passing directions connected issues specified arsenic whether oregon not the Aadhaar paper tin beryllium utilized arsenic an recognition document. However, the halfway law situation has not been decided, and arsenic the Court’s observations present show, the fait accompli seems to person go permanently enshrined, with immoderate aboriginal judgement serving lone to enactment arsenic a retrospective validation of existing facts connected the ground.
It is worthy remembering that successful a law democracy, the Court’s superior relation is to guarantee that different authorities organs comply with the Constitution, and not to alteration itself into an administrator. However, the Court’s behaviour successful the SIR lawsuit is not new: portion the constitutionality of the Aadhaar programme was challenged successful 2012, it was lone successful 2018 that a last judgment was passed, by which clip Aadhaar had efficaciously go a fait accompli, excessively large to beryllium undone. In the intervening six years, the Court had passed assorted orders astir wherever and however Aadhaar could beryllium utilized oregon demanded, but had not touched the law situation earlier it. The repetition of this signifier successful the SIR lawsuit reveals a normalisation of the Court moving distant from its relation arsenic a law court, and adopting the relation of the administrator. This is unfortunate.
There are important issues
Indeed, the SIR process has raised definite important law issues. Many of these issues turned upon the question of power: portion the Representation of the People Act (India’s umbrella predetermination law) authorises the Election Commission of India (ECI) to behaviour a peculiar revision for “any constituency oregon immoderate portion of a constituency”, and for reasons to beryllium recorded, determination is simply a cardinal question astir whether this precise circumstantial powerfulness is besides a carte blanche authorisation to behaviour State and nation-wide SIRs. The wording of the conception seems to connote that its intent is simply a targeted and focused workout meant to close for distortions that mightiness creep successful in definite circumstantial places. By contrast, the contiguous SIRs are dragnet, large-scale revisions of the rolls that, successful effect, crook them into citizenship determining exercises. Added to this is the information that electoral rolls already exist. Thus the ongoing SIRs magnitude to an workout wherever the full populations of States are called upon to freshly found their citizenship and their close to vote, without immoderate pre-existing origin for suspicion. The law question past turns upon whether the ECI tin simply run connected this wide presumption of non-citizenship, and unit radical to beryllium their rights from scratch.
In 1995, successful Lal Babu Hussein and Others vs Electoral Registration Officer and Others, the Court had held that it could not. There again, the ECI had sought to effect large-scale removal of names from the elector rolls, acting connected the suspicion that successful definite constituencies determination were galore non-voters connected the rolls. The Court struck down this exercise, and successful the directions that it passed, made it wide that notices for removal from the rolls would person to beryllium directed astatine circumstantial individuals, and besides a disclosure of the crushed for suspicion that the idiosyncratic successful question was not a national of India.
As noted above, the contiguous SIRs wholly invert that basal process. Instead of issuing notices to circumstantial radical that it reasonably suspects are non-voters, the ECI present requires everyone to travel and beryllium that they are voters.
It is important to enactment that aggregate reports person travel successful from assorted States astir arbitrary deletions and of individuals having to tally from pillar to station to beryllium that their citizenship does not beryllium successful a vacuum. They are the merchandise of this cardinal inversion of the state-citizen relationship. The different troubling interaction of the SIR workout is that the wholesale revision of elector rolls has brought into play the notorious Form 7, which allows immoderate idiosyncratic to “object” to the inclusion of immoderate different idiosyncratic successful the electoral roll. There person already been wide reports astir the misuse of Form 7 to person radical struck disconnected the rolls, en masse, from aggregate States.
An accentuation of disparities
Finally — and this was thing highlighted by the West Bengal Chief Minister arsenic good — successful a state with immense worldly inequalities, and disparities successful entree to the State, documentation requirements run asymmetrically, and, successful particular, interaction the susceptible and the marginalised (people astatine the intersection of the axes of caste, poorness and gender). Indian Courts person agelong articulated an equality jurisprudence that is cognisant of worldly and socio-political discrimination: a process that accentuates, alternatively than mitigates, these disparities, violates basal law principles.
It should beryllium evident that these are not specified “administrative” glitches that tin beryllium corrected by administrative tweaks, successful the mode successful which the Court has been doing for the past 8 months. Rather, the circumstantial problems of elector deletions and disenfranchisement that are being brought to the Court connected a regular ground are symptoms. They are downstream from the existent issue, which is the mode successful which the ongoing SIRs invert the narration betwixt the authorities and the individual, and permission the second efficaciously astatine the mercy of the former. This is simply a question that goes to the bosom of the law order. It cannot beryllium remedied done a specified administrative fix. Rather, it indispensable beryllium addressed from the position of a law model that genuinely affirms the dignity and participatory rights of each individual, refusing to trim persons to specified cogs successful the instrumentality of authorities and administrative efficiency.
Gautam Bhatia is simply a Delhi-based lawyer
