“A Daniel come to judgment!” exclaims Shylock in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice as Portia concedes his right to Antonio’s “pound of flesh”.
Somewhat similar might be the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) reaction after the Supreme Court’s (SC) May 27 order sanctifying the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), a process devised by the ECI to eliminate “ineligible” electors.
Unfortunately, in the real world of the Indian electoral system, there was no twist in the SIR tale like the one in the play, when Portia turns the tables on Shylock by denying him “one drop of blood” as he extracts his pound of flesh. The SIR is no Shakespearean play, although it contains a lot of drama and a few tragic elements.
The SC judgment, in the process of settling the issues, has unsettled people. It says nothing that is not already contained in law. There is little adjudication; only an unqualified reaffirmation of the letter, no matter if the spirit seems stifled.
The order reaffirms the “legality” of the SIR process and the ECI’s authority in doing it “in such manner as it may think fit”, provided in Section 21(3) of the Representation of the People Act, which was never in doubt even though its “fairness” was challenged. It has stoutly defended the ECI’s plenary powers, including its authority to discard time-tested procedures that earned the people’s trust. The SC has upheld the “might” of the ECI and left the people with the impression that “might is right” and all that is legal is presumed fair.
The farcical element is that while acknowledging the ECI’s “institutional expertise”, the SC has taken credit for protecting the constitutional rights of the electors through “a series of judicial interventions, which progressively infused the process with safeguards”. The Court is unmindful of the wrongful exclusion of electors through the “logical discrepancy” tool and has overlooked the denial of voting rights to over 27 lakh electors who couldn’t complete the appellate process conducted under its own supervision in West Bengal.
The SIR became contentious because of the ECI’s unprecedented classification of electors in two groups in Bihar: pre- and post-2003, a template for all subsequent exercises of “purifying” the electoral rolls (ER). The more disturbing part was the ECI attaching a “presumption of citizenship” to the pre-2003 electors, thereby cloaking the rest of the electors in a shroud of “non-citizenship”. Such “intruders” were asked to produce one of the 11 prescribed documents, to which the SC added the Aadhaar card, knowing full well that none of them was conclusive evidence of citizenship.
It is this central issue of citizenship that remains as ambiguous after the SC judgment as it was before the ECI stirred a hornet’s nest on June 24, 2025, when it issued the initial notification. In its judgment, the SC states that the ECI is empowered “to undertake a limited enquiry into citizenship for the purpose of satisfying itself as to eligibility for inclusion in the electoral roll.” However, it holds that “such an enquiry does not amount to a determination of citizenship”. While this affects the individual’s entitlement to be included in the ER, it doesn’t “divest the individual of claims of citizenship, nor does it foreclose a determination of that question by the Competent Authority under the Citizenship Act.”
What this means is that if the Electoral Registration Officer is not satisfied with the citizenship status of electors, they will not be allowed to remain in the ER and such cases will be referred to the competent authority for finally “determining” citizenship. This implies losing the right to vote even before citizenship is finally determined.
A similar exercise was done in Assam a few years ago when doubtful voters were put in the D list and their voting right suspended. To this day, the ECI hasn’t divulged how many of these have had their citizenship determined. Shouldn’t the SC have asked the ECI to disclose the fate of these electors before prescribing a similar procedure for the future? It simply shrugged its shoulders as if saying, “bad luck if the gravy train of Indian electoral democracy just passed you and you couldn’t get on to it. Try another time.”
The right to vote may be the most precious gift of the Constitution, but it can be suspended by an unconvinced ECI. The SC order states that being enrolled once as an elector doesn’t guarantee continuance because it is a “rebuttable presumption”. If found “infected”, you could be “quarantined” and must lie “moorchhit” like Lakshman till you find a Hanuman to fetch “jadibooti” to revive you.
While the SC has voted in the ECI’s favour, it is up to the latter to legitimise its victory by placing in the public domain the “material on record” that convinced the Court that the earlier ER suffered from “cumulative inaccuracies over an extended period” necessitating the comprehensive SIR exercise instead of “piecemeal solutions”. It should present a complete report card on the health of the ER following the SIR as per the parameters of “integrity, accuracy and purity” compared to the ER prepared under its own supervision earlier.
The ECI must disclose the number of “ineligible” people whose citizenship was found doubtful through the SIR and refer them within four weeks to the competent authority for adjudicating their citizenship. So far, the ECI has not disclosed this number while providing details of those “permanently shifted, dead or duplicate”, entries which are supposed to be removed during the routine ER revision exercise. The ECI must also bring out a compendium of lessons learnt in the first two phases and the improvement in the procedure for future SIR rather than carry on with its present ways because of the SC’s endorsement.
If it fails to do that, Indian electors will continue to contend with a system that demands documentary evidence of citizenship without providing one. As electors mourn the loss of a friendly ECI, they must rue losing the protection of the only institution created to provide that.
Let’s hope We, the People are not doomed to be victims of a hospital-acquired infection.