Opinion SIR is wrong on two counts. It’s neither complete nor sound
Applied to electoral rolls, completeness demands that no eligible citizen is disenfranchised, whereas soundness demands that no ineligible person is included. These goals often come into tension in real-world systems.
SIR is wrong on two counts. It’s neither sound nor complete It is undeniable that the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) pursues a legitimate aim for both the Election Commission of India (ECI) and the state. Where doubts exist about the integrity of electoral rolls — as opposition parties themselves have alleged — it would be imprudent to conduct elections without addressing those deficiencies. The ECI certainly acts within its constitutional mandate when it insists on corrections to the rolls under Article 326 of the Constitution and sections 16-19 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, which make citizenship a condition of enrolment. However, an electoral registration officer is not constitutionally empowered to adjudicate citizenship. This raises a deeper concern: Whether the determination of citizenship and voter eligibility can, in practice, be made reliably, fairly, and in conformity with constitutional principles.
Indian citizenship is a legal status initially defined by the Constitution and governed by parliamentary laws under Article 11, principally through the Citizenship Act, 1955. The Act lays down multiple, time-dependent conditions for citizenship by birth, descent, registration, naturalisation, and incorporation of territory. While precise in theory, this framework is difficult to operationalise. Weaknesses in birth registration, especially in earlier decades, mean that many lack reliable records of their own birth or that of their parents. Similar deficiencies exist in death registration and migration tracking. As a result, deletion, de-duplication, and verification exercises operate under informational uncertainty. For many citizens, direct documentary proof of citizenship is simply unavailable.
Faced with these constraints, the ECI has turned to indirect verification through cross-referencing. Under the prescribed enumeration process, electors must submit basic personal details such as date of birth and mobile number, Aadhaar details (optional), along with information about parents or spouse, where applicable. Crucially, voters have to furnish their own EPIC numbers or those of close relatives to establish continuity with earlier electoral rolls, particularly the intensive revision conducted between 2002 and 2005. A draft roll is then to be prepared, notices are to be issued to those deemed “doubtful”, supporting documents from a notified list may be sought, and a provision for appeal exists at the final stage.
However, procedural detail does not guarantee correctness. In formal analysis of protocols, correctness is characterised by the twin properties of completeness and soundness. Applied to electoral rolls, completeness demands that no eligible citizen be disenfranchised, whereas soundness demands that no ineligible person be included. These goals often come into tension in real-world systems where poorly designed procedures can force trade-offs with serious ethical and constitutional consequences.
Given how kaagaz works in India, the current process risks failing on both counts. Granting local officials wide discretion to label voters “doubtful,” without verifiable and uniformly applied criteria beyond linkage to a prior revision, introduces arbitrariness that undermines completeness. Reliance on identity and eligibility documents that cannot be verified with certainty raises concerns about soundness. This leads to a fundamental question about the ECI’s primary obligation: Whether it is to ensure that every eligible voter can vote, or to prevent any ineligible voter from voting, even at the cost of excluding some eligible citizens?
These concerns are compounded by over-reliance on post-facto challenges to wrongful deletion. Such an approach reverses basic principles of natural justice by permitting deprivation of the franchise without prior notice or hearing, shifting the burden of challenge and proof onto citizens, and imposing disproportionate obstacles on those least able to surmount them. Errors that exclude eligible voters cause far greater democratic harm than the temporary inclusion of some ineligible ones.
Establishing a trustworthy network of de-duplicated identities and citizenship requires careful protocol design, clarity about system guarantees, and rigorous analysis of failure modes. For the SIR to command democratic legitimacy, completeness must be privileged over soundness: Accepting the inclusion of some additional voters in a country of 1.4 billion, while strengthening border management and long-term registration systems in parallel.
Banerjee is professor, Ashoka University. Damani is professor, IIT Bombay. Views are personal
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