Supreme Court Upholds SIR: The SC Verdict is a Performance in Mendacity |OPINION

It took me terribly long to write this ‘review’ of the Supreme Court verdict in the special intensive revision (SIR) of Bihar's electoral rolls issue, now pronounced over a week ago. While this holdup was majorly on account of my unwillingness to granularly read a constitutional law judgment in a matter which, when it was being heard, warranted exigency and today, only strengthens a fait accompli situation, there was another peculiar challenge with this judgment which made me dawdle over the 124-page document with, dare I say, extremely bewildering thoughts.I say with a lot of responsibility that this is no ordinary judgment, for it relies on one type of precedents to reach completely different outcomes, it validates a rushed disenfranchisement exercise without scrutinising the immediate challenges which necessitated the rushed exercise and it extends an uncritical, incautious credence to a guarantor institution the independence of which is now doubted by all serious stakeholders. But most of all, it stands out because it treats the voter as secondary and the bureaucratic process as primary, something which was hitherto unheard of in our jurisprudence.Supreme Court Clears SIR, Calls It a Step Towards Free and Fair ElectionsLet us be clear about one thing: the opposition to the SIR exercise, when it was first announced in June of 2025, was not only on account of the sketchy procedure or the impetuous timeline contemplated therein; it was seen with suspicion by all stakeholders because by June 2025, the Election Commission had a demonstrable record of partisanship in favour of the ruling party at the Centre. The concerns were persuasive because, while all political parties and civil society organisations expressed anxiety around the hasty timelines and departure from established conventions, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) seemed remarkably apathetic about the potential deletion of its voters. The BJP had reasons to repose unwavering confidence in the Commission and as the process marched on, its belief only received absolute vindication.We now examine the judgment, or what qualifies as nothing more than a post facto legitimisation of a process which, by April of 2026, had arbitrarily disenfranchised millions in two key states where BJP had never seen its own Chief Ministers. By May of 2026, the BJP had Chief Minsters in both these States. In politics, all coincidences are a result of careful planning.The judgment relies on two legal provisions to conclude that the Commission enjoys untrammeled regulatory powers when it comes to ‘elections’ and auxiliary activities: first, Article 324, as the source of plenary constitutional power and second, Section 21(3) of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 (RoP Act), as the specific statutory basis of uncanalised authority when it comes to ‘special’ revision of rolls. Both these provisions have in-built or judge-made guardrails to circumscribe the Commission’s regulatory mandate which have been given a go-by.All precedents holding field lay down that plenary powers under Article 324 exist only ‘in the residual interstices completely untouched by statute’, that is, in areas which are not already governed by the parliamentary law enacted pursuant to Article 327. Even while the operative portions of these precedents find explicit mention, the judgment goes completely astray in para 18:“It is incorrect to posit that once Parliament legislates on a particular subject, the Commission is entirely disabled from exercising its vested constitutional powers. The Commission inherently possesses the jurisdiction to issue directions of a general and regulatory character to effectuate the constitutional purpose entrusted to it. Parliament by legislating under Article 327 does not reduce Article 324 to a dead letter.”The law in this case was not silent. Sections 21(2) and 21(3) of the RoP Act read with Rules 4 to 23 and 25 of the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 (1960 Rules) deal extensively with the mechanism of revision of rolls. In that sense, the RoP Act and the 1960 Rules together form a self-contained code, which regulates the aspect of roll revision end-to-end; the Commission, however, chose to operate parallelly with the written law by devising a novel mechanism with no rooting in written law, at a time when the Assembly elections in Bihar were right around the corner.Bihar: SIR Deletions Exceed Win Margins in 75 Seats NDA Snatched From OppositionIn West Bengal, we also saw the Court facilitating this parallel procedure when it directed the formation of appellate tribunals to hear appeals against exclusions, when the RoP Act and the 1960 already prescribe a detailed procedure to insulate voters against arbitrary deletions. This expansive reading of Article 324, therefore, is only a belated imprimatur, for the Court had already granted the Commission carte blanche to act as it pleases, completely unfettered by the canons of parliamentary law.In the same spirit, the Court then goes on to bestow the widest possible amplitude upon Section 21(3) in defiance of the carefully calibrated language employed therein. The provision says ‘any constituency or part of a constituency’ and not ‘one or more constituencies’. Had the original intention been to grant unbridled power for statewide overhaul, the constitutional text would have said so expressly. Instead, the text sought to restrict this extraordinary power; it was to be exercised sparingly in exceptional cases where special circumstances warranted an unscheduled revision.Similarly, Rule 25(2) of the 1960 Rules limits the contours of Section 21(3) by mandating the application of Rules 4 to 23 (which require a personal hearing and a reasonable opportunity to show cause before any potential deletion) to any exercise of ‘intensive’ revision. Even this express rule escapes notice of the Court.On the issue of citizenship, the Court makes another fundamental error by engaging in doublespeak. It records, correctly, that ‘the formal determination of citizenship…cannot be undertaken by the Commission’; nonetheless, it validates deletions ‘on account of the Commission being of the opinion that they are not citizens’, even before a formal adjudication on that front by the authority under the Citizenship Act, 1955 or the foreigners tribunal. This once again reverses the burden of correction and puts it on the individual, rendering the constitutional principle of universal adult suffrage completely meaningless.The judgment speaks through its silences. It does not deal with perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the SIR exercise: its timing. The Commission did not break a sweat in addressing why a complete overhaul of rolls four months before a state election was necessary, especially when regular summary revisions in Bihar took place even after the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The voter list is the most rudimentary constituent of an election; that the Commission was allowed to tinker with it in an election year raises grave questions. The judgment also does not account for the demographic patterns of exclusions and its disproportionate impact on Bihar’s migrant population, or its poor and the uneducated.The Court relies on assumptions rather than empirics: mere deployment of para-legal volunteers counts as sufficient assistance for voters with no means/capacity of engagement, with no assessment of whether or not these measures could actually facilitate participation. The Court also shows a stark unwillingness to engage with numbers. Till this day, the Commission has not provided a breakup of SIR-linked deletions in Bihar. We are yet to come across the exact number of ‘doubtful citizens’ identified by the Commission. Many questions, objective as well as subjective, remain unanswered.Post this verdict, the Commission need not answer a thing for the unintended (or perhaps, intended) consequence of the judgment is that the Commissions now stands as a supra-legal entity, bound neither by constitutional convention nor by statutory law. Even as concerns around its impartiality magnify, it only strengthens its incumbent position and grows in power. With the blessings of the Supreme Court, it now replaces the citizen as the primary actor in India’s democratic scheme.Voters may come and go but the State and its opaque institutions must remain.(Disclaimer: the author has appeared as counsel for one of the petitioners in the Bihar SIR litigation before the Supreme Court of India.)(Harshit Anand is an advocate practicing at the Supreme Court of India. He tweets at @7h_anand. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)

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Supreme Court's SIR Verdict Puts Bureaucracy Above the Voter

The consequences of the present verdict travel far beyond the lone issue of propriety of roll revisions.

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Topics: Supreme Court Bihar Elections west bengal assembly elections