Supreme Court of India Upholds SIR Exercise, Calls It Step Towards Free & Fair Polls

Court affirms Election Commission's authority to verify citizenship for electoral roll inclusion

By Ekamjit Singh Brar

New Delhi, May 27

The Supreme Court on Wednesday (May 27, 2026) upheld the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls as an exer-cise done by the Election Commission of India (ECI) in furtherance of the Constitutional principle of free and fair elections. A Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant dismissed the petitioners’ view that SIR was a surrep-titious, backdoor move to conduct citizenship screen-ing in the name of cleaning up the electoral roll off aliens.

The petitions had accused the ECI of arbitrarily assuming powers to “deter-mine citizenship” while overriding limitations clearly prescribed in parlia-mentary laws, rules and its own manual without pro-viding “any good reason”.

The Supreme Court judg-ment upholding the consti-tutionality of the Bihar SIR would have an impact on further rounds of SIR. The second phase of the SIR, covering 51 crore voters in 12 States and Union Territories — including in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Assam — had com-menced even as the Bihar challenge was pending in the Supreme Court. The judgment pronounced by the Chief Justice in open court on Wednesday (May 27) said the ECI was empowered under Article 324 of the Constitution to examine citizenship to veri-fy inclusion in the electoral roll. This verification was not the final word on the citizenship of a person. The ECI, if it finds that a person did not have the necessary documents and did not pass the enquiry, could for-ward the case to the com-petent authorities in the Central government for adjudication under the Citizenship Act.

The court said SIR, though it stretched the modalities of electoral roll revision under the Representation of the People Act and the Registration of Electors Rules, cannot be invalidat-ed. It was done in an exi-gency but was not “mani-festly excessive”. The pro-cedural safeguards of revi-sion were complied with.

The court rejected the arguments raised by the petitioners, including the Association for Democratic Reforms, represented by advocates Prashant Bhushan and Neha Rathi, that SIR ipso facto reversed the burden of proof of citi-zenship on the voters.

The court said the variety of indicative documents, including Aadhaar, was a reasonable demand and part of a structured regime devised for verifying vot-ers. The court reiterated that SIR must continue to maintain a calibrated bal-ance in the choice of indicative documents.

The Bihar SIR hearings had seen the Supreme Court effectively intervene to make the massive exercise more inclusive. One of the effective judicial interven-tions was to include Aadhaar as the 12th in the list of 11 ‘indicative’ docu-ments that voters could file as proof of their identity or residence.

As the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls done by the Election Commission of India (ECI), Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar on Wednesday (May 27, 2026) said the ECI “was, is and would always” be with the voters. “The first step for nation building is voting. Therefore, every citizen of India who has completed 18 years of age should become an elector and should always vote in accordance with the Constitution, elec-toral laws, rules and instructions issued there in,” the CEC said in a video message.