Supreme Court Justice warns SIR voter purge threatens constitutional voting rights

At one outlet NALSAR-Justice BR Sawhney Memorial Moot Court Competition, Justice Ujjal Bhuyan warned that the Election Commission’s special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls could render millions of Indians effectively second-class citizens by stripping them of the vote, a move he called intrinsically arbitrary. He stressed that the Constitution envisions a single class of citizens with equal voting rights, and that any administrative measure that creates a disenfranchised class threatens the constitutional order.

The SIR exercise has faced scrutiny after petitions highlighted the exclusion of 47.56 lakh names and the issuance of notices to another 33.13 lakh voters for alleged “no mapping” or “logical discrepancies.” A Supreme Court bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant has sought the Election Commission’s response, while Justice Joymalya Bagchi questioned the mechanical generation of notices. In West Bengal, hundreds of thousands of affected voters have appealed, prompting the Commission to propose expanding appellate tribunals. Justice Bhuyan invoked historic constitutional principles and past Supreme Court judgments to underline that the right to vote cannot be detached from citizenship.