New Delhi: The Supreme Court of India has upheld the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls conducted by the Election Commission of India in the State of Bihar in 2025, holding that the exercise was legally valid, proportionate, procedurally sound, and within the constitutional mandate of the Commission. The judgment was delivered by Chief Justice Surya Kant on behalf of the bench while disposing of a batch of nearly twenty writ petitions filed under Article 32 of the Constitution.
The Bihar electoral rolls had last undergone a Special Intensive Revision in 2003. For over two decades after that, rolls were updated only through summary revisions, which involve a lighter degree of verification. On 24 June 2025, the Election Commission issued an order directing a fresh Special Intensive Revision across all assembly constituencies in Bihar ahead of the state legislature elections scheduled for November 2025. The order noted large-scale demographic shifts, rapid urbanisation, migration-driven duplication of entries, and the presence of deceased persons on the rolls as justification for the exercise.
The revision required existing voters to submit enumeration forms by 25 July 2025. Those who did not submit the form were excluded from the draft electoral rolls published on 1 August 2025. About 65 lakh electors were left out of the draft roll. The final roll, published on 30 September 2025, contained around 7.42 crore electors compared to 7.89 crore before the exercise began. The Bihar elections went ahead in November 2025 and results were declared on 14 November 2025.
Petitioners, including the Association for Democratic Reforms and various political organisations, challenged the exercise as unconstitutional. They argued that the Election Commission had no power under Article 324 of the Constitution to override the statutory regime already set up by Parliament under the Representation of the People Act, 1950 and the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960. They also contended that Section 21(3) of the Act, which provides for a special revision in such manner as the Commission may think fit, was a constituency-specific provision and could not justify a statewide exercise. They further urged that enrolled voters carry a presumption of citizenship that could not be disturbed without following Rule 21A of the 1960 Rules, which requires individual notice before deletion. The Court rejected these contentions across the board.
On the question of power, the Court held that Article 324 and Article 327 of the Constitution are complementary, not competing provisions. Parliament’s power to legislate on elections under Article 327 does not extinguish the Commission’s constitutional authority under Article 324. The Court summarised the governing principle:
“Article 324 is not a spent or empty provision. It vests real constitutional power in the Commission… The correct principle emerging therefrom is that parliamentary legislation under Article 327 undoubtedly regulates the electoral field, but the Commission does not, for that reason, cease to be a constitutional authority acting in its own right under Article 324. The plenary powers afforded to the Commission under the Constitution supplement the law where necessary to effectuate the constitutional mandate, but cannot be deployed to override an express statutory prohibition.”
The Court laid down four propositions to summarise its holding on the source of the Commission’s power. Of particular note was the observation that the Commission’s supervisory authority is inherently expansive, functioning as “a continuous wellspring of power” encompassing every stage of the electoral machinery. Parliament’s legislation in the field regulates the exercise of that power but does not extinguish it.
On the geographic scope of the exercise, the petitioners argued that the word “any” in Section 21(3), referring to “any constituency or part of a constituency,” meant the Commission could only act constituency by constituency and could not cover the entire state in one order. The Court rejected this, holding that “any” may be read as “many” or “all” depending on context and purpose.
While doing so, the Court observed that interpreting the word “any” as meaning only one constituency would unnecessarily restrict the Election Commission’s power to undertake special revision of electoral rolls. The Court held that such a narrow interpretation would defeat the purpose of the provision, especially in situations where statewide issues affect the purity of electoral rolls, and therefore adopted a purposive interpretation to uphold the broader scope of the Commission’s powers.
On proportionality, the Court found the exercise legally sound at each stage of the analysis. As to the legitimacy of the purpose, it held that the restoration of accuracy and integrity in the electoral roll is not merely an administrative goal but a foundational constitutional obligation:
“The objective sought to be achieved by the Commission, namely, the restoration of accuracy, completeness, and integrity of the electoral roll, is not only legitimate but is integral to the constitutional mandate entrusted to it. The reasons furnished by the Commission cannot be characterised as extraneous or illusory; they bear a direct and rational nexus to the core function of maintaining a credible electoral process… the exercise is firmly anchored in both constitutional principle and statutory design.”
The Court further held that the Commission’s decision to conduct the exercise was not merely justified but was, in a meaningful sense, compelled by the statute, since Rule 21A of the 1960 Rules itself identifies non-reporting of deaths, migration, and disqualifications as grounds for deletion. The measures adopted, including house-to-house enumeration, submission of forms, and scrutiny with a right to appeal, bore a direct and proximate nexus to those objectives. On necessity, the Court declined to hold that a targeted constituency-level approach would have been equally effective, finding that piecemeal solutions were unsuited to remedying structural deficiencies spread across an entire state.
On the claim that enrolled voters carry an irrebuttable presumption of citizenship, the Court drew a firm distinction between the nature of a presumption and the constitutional power of systemic oversight. The Court further held that although entries in the electoral roll enjoy a rebuttable presumption of validity as official acts, such presumption cannot prevent the Election Commission from carrying out a fresh and intensive verification exercise. It observed that the presumption merely facilitates decision-making and cannot be used to shield potentially invalid entries from scrutiny. Accordingly, it held that the Commission retains the constitutional authority to re-examine whether the conditions necessary for inclusion in the electoral roll were originally fulfilled and continue to subsist, notwithstanding the existence of a prior entry.
On the procedure for deletion, the Court held that Rule 21A of the 1960 Rules had not been violated. Non-inclusion in the draft roll after failure to submit the enumeration form was not a final deletion but only a provisional step. The full process of claims, objections, individualised notice, inquiry by the Electoral Registration Officer, speaking orders, and a two-tier appeal under Section 24 of the Act remained available before any name was finally removed. The Court held that the substance of Rule 21A’s safeguards was preserved within the SIR framework, even if distributed across multiple stages rather than as a single pre-decisional exercise.
On the documentation regime, the Court held that the Commission has authority to prescribe appropriate documents as part of a special revision exercise. The exclusion of the Electors Photo Identity Card was found to be inherent in the logic of the exercise itself:
“The EPIC is itself a derivative document, issued on the basis of inclusion in the electoral roll. To permit its use as proof in an exercise intended to verify the correctness of that very inclusion would pose the threat of rendering the entire exercise nugatory.”
The exclusion of Aadhaar Cards from the original list was justified because the Aadhaar Act does not treat Aadhaar as proof of citizenship or domicile, though the Court during the proceedings directed the Commission to accept Aadhaar as a twelfth document of identity. The exclusion of ration cards was upheld on grounds of evidentiary reliability.
On the question of whether the Commission can examine citizenship while revising rolls, the Court drew a principled line between two distinct legal exercises. It acknowledged the constitutional weight of the subject:
“Citizenship, in our constitutional scheme, is not a matter of mere formal classification. It is the juridical basis of an individual’s relationship with the State, from which flows a constellation of rights, entitlements, and obligations… Any process that touches upon this domain must, therefore, be approached with a high degree of procedural fairness and institutional restraint.”
The Court, while recognising the significance of citizenship status, held that the Election Commission is nevertheless competent to undertake a limited enquiry into citizenship for the purpose of determining electoral eligibility. Drawing a distinction between a formal adjudication of citizenship and administrative scrutiny for voter enrolment, the Court observed that the former involves a conclusive determination under the Citizenship Act, whereas the latter is only a restricted exercise to ascertain whether statutory conditions for inclusion in the electoral roll are satisfied. It clarified that such scrutiny does not amount to declaring a person a non-citizen, but merely reflects the Commission’s inability to arrive at the requisite satisfaction for electoral purposes.
The Court further directed that where the Commission is not satisfied with a person’s eligibility on citizenship grounds, it must refer the case to the competent Central Government authority for formal determination, and that determination must be completed before the next election in the relevant constituency, so that the person’s electoral rights are not left in prolonged uncertainty.
The Court also acknowledged the role played by its own interim directions in progressively strengthening the fairness of the process, including directing the publication of the list of 65 lakh excluded electors with reasons, deploying political parties and para-legal volunteers to assist voters, and expanding the document list to include Aadhaar. These interventions, the Court held, collectively ensured that the exercise, as ultimately conducted, satisfied the constitutional standard of proportionality.
The writ petitions were accordingly dismissed and the Special Intensive Revision was upheld in its entirety.
Case Title: Association for Democratic Reforms & Ors. v. Election Commission of India & Ors., 2026 INSC 564
