The Supreme Court was informed that electoral registration officers have no authority to decide a voter’s citizenship. Petitioners said the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision suffered from major lapses and unlawful voter deletions.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court was informed on Thursday that electoral registration officers (EROs) do not have the authority to decide whether a voter is an Indian citizen, and that the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls has been carried out with serious procedural mistakes, lack of transparency, and without proper legal power to check citizenship.
These submissions were made by ad vocate Prashant Bhushan, who appeared for one of the petitioners challenging the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) decision to conduct SIR across several states.
He made his arguments before a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi on the fourth day of the final hearing.
Bhushan said that several court decisions clearly show that EROs cannot decide who is a citizen of India. He argued,
“It is very clear that it is not the job of the ERO to determine citizenship. All that they can do is to refer it to the authorities concerned if they feel that the citizenship of a person is doubtful.”
He added that an ERO must give proper written reasons before sending any case of “doubtful citizenship” to the concerned authority. According to him, the officer must then wait for the final decision from that authority.
Bhushan stressed that
“Whether it is the Union home ministry under the Citizenship Act, whether it is a Foreigners Tribunal, whether it is a court, these authorities alone will determine it.”
He also told the Court that even if a person is mentally unwell, the Election Commission cannot on its own remove that person’s name from the voter list.
Bhushan alleged that there had been mass deletion of voter names during the SIR. He pointed out that in Bihar, the electoral roll initially had 7.89 crore names, but when the draft roll was published, around 65 lakh names had been removed. He said this showed how large-scale the deletions were.
He further highlighted a procedural problem: many people whose names had been deleted were told to reapply using Form 6, which is meant only for first-time voters.
He said,
“To fill Form 6, they would have to file a false declaration that they were not on the electoral roll, whereas in fact they were,”
adding that only 21 lakh voters were added back during the claims and objections period.
Drawing a comparison with the issues faced during the NRC (National Register of Citizens) process in Assam, Bhushan said that demanding specific documents hurts poor people the most.
According to him,
“In a poor country like India, at least 25 per cent of people will be excluded because they cannot produce documents,”
and instead, simple alternatives like affidavits and neighbour testimony should be accepted.
Bhushan also said that nearly 26 lakh voters in Bihar were sent general, identical notices asking them to prove their eligibility, even though no specific reason was given for why their status was questioned.
He highlighted that while 86% of such cases were accepted, around 3.66 lakh voters were removed on the basis of these objections.
He argued that the Election Commission did not even follow its own transparency rules. The guidelines require daily online updates of Form 6, 7, and 8 applications and mandatory sharing of lists with political parties.
However, Bhushan said the EC did not follow these procedures in Bihar and was still ignoring them in other states. He stated,
“in Bihar, they did not do so at all, and they are not doing so even now in other states.”
Concluding his submissions, he said that although there are nearly five lakh duplicate voter entries, the EC ignored the most reliable verification method—social audits through Gram Sabhas or Ward Sabhas.
He said that reading out names publicly helps identify people who have moved away or passed away, yet
“no social audit has been conducted”.
The bench will continue hearing the matter on December 9.
ALSO READ: ECI Set to Launch Pan-India Special Intensive Revision Across 10 Plus States Soon
Earlier, on Tuesday, senior advocate Abhishek Singhvi argued that the Election Commission’s reasons such as “rapid urbanisation” and “frequent migration” for conducting SIR were not valid grounds.
He also said that although the EC can revise the roll of any particular constituency, that power does not permit it to conduct a countrywide revision.
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