The MPTC and ZPTC polls are not conducted by the ECI. Articles 243K and 243ZA vest panchayat and municipal elections in the State Election Commission (SEC). But the SEC does not prepare its own rolls. It adopts the ECI’s Assembly rolls and divides them ward by ward, so a defect in one becomes a defect in the other.
After the elimination of 65 lakh voters in Bihar, the victor can be explained as the CEC or its boss. If AP goes to polls without 44 lakh voters, who rules? And where is the rule of law?
The exercise began in Bihar in June 2025, where the draft roll dropped about 65 lakh names. It then moved to 12 States and Union Territories, where the deaths of overworked Booth Level Officers (BLOs) became a national controversy. Is en masse removal constitutional?
In Andhra Pradesh, enumeration ran from June 15 to July 24 of this year. By ECI’s own figures, 44,89,512 entries were removed before the draft roll as absent, shifted, dead, or duplicate. The electorate stood at 3,75,69,896 as on October 14. If this elimination is ‘selective’, is that not match-fixing?
Removing the dead and the duplicates is housekeeping that the law demands. But “absent” and “shifted” are judgments made at a doorstep. A migrant worker in Hyderabad or a student in Bengaluru is not a ghost voter. Each is a citizen whose name cannot be struck off without notice.
On May 27, 2026, in Association for Democratic Reforms v. Election Commission of India, the Supreme Court upheld SIR as a valid exercise of power under Article 324 and Section 21(3). It held that a name on the roll raises only a rebuttable presumption of eligibility. The protection given in Lal Babu Hussein (1995), it said, is no shield against verification.
On the way, the Court had made the ECI publish the names deleted in Bihar, with reasons, in August 2025. In the very next month, it directed that Aadhaar be accepted as a twelfth document of identity, though not as proof of citizenship.
But the court also drew a line that every citizen must know. The ECI may inquire into citizenship only for electoral purposes. It cannot finally declare anyone as a non-citizen. Doubtful cases must go to the competent authority under the Citizenship Act, 1955, and wrongly deleted citizens must be restored. The verdict settles the commission’s power. It does not excuse a single deletion made without notice, hearing and a reasoned order.
What ‘poll’ is it, and
what is its ‘role’?
The Supreme Court has settled that the Special Intensive Revision is lawful. Is it unconditional? In Andhra Pradesh’s Mandal and Zilla Parishad elections, the harder question is whether the State Election Commission will act before a court tells it to.
The right to vote is not a gift from the government of the day, though not spelt out clearly among Fundamental Rights. Article 325 forbids keeping anyone off the electoral roll on the grounds of religion, race, caste or sex. Every circular, every enumeration form and every Booth Level Officer’s knock on a door must serve these two Articles. That is the yardstick by which a citizen should measure both the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and the Mandal Parishad (MPTC) and Zilla Parishad (ZPTC) elections now under way in Andhra Pradesh.
Without ‘kavach’, killing
‘voters’ is easy:
In Mohinder Singh Gill (1978), the Supreme Court described Article 324 as a reservoir of power. It also held that the power must be exercised fairly and within the laws Parliament makes. In Anoop Baranwal (2023), the Supreme Court tried to shield appointments of Election Commissioners from the executive. Parliament’s 2023 law then replaced the Chief Justice on the selection panel with a Union Minister, giving the government two of three votes. That looks lawful. It does not inspire the confidence the Court was looking for. It is about doubting the credibility of all three estates.