Context:

• In Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) vs Election Commission of India (ECI), the Supreme Court, led by CJI Surya Kant, upheld the constitutional validity of the ECI’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.
• The judgment recognised clean voter rolls as essential to democratic legitimacy, but it has triggered concerns regarding exclusion, documentation burdens, and the disenfranchisement of vulnerable voters.

Why the Judgment Matters?

• The judgment:
  • It opens with a striking observation: Before counting votes, the state must first determine whose votes can be counted.
  • This frames the debate around electoral integrity versus democratic inclusion.
  • The Court accepted that electoral rolls had accumulated inaccuracies over time due to migration, urbanisation, duplicate entries, and deceased voters.
  • Bihar had not undergone an SIR for over two decades, making revision administratively necessary.
• The ruling endorses:
  • The ECI’s power to conduct such an exercise under:
    • Section 21(3) of the Representation of the People Act (RPA), 1950.
    • Article 324 of the Constitution, which vests superintendence and control of elections in the ECI.
  • The Court concluded that the SIR does not violate the principle of free and fair elections.

Key Constitutional Safeguard - Citizenship and Electoral Rolls:

• A major contribution of the judgment lies in drawing a distinction between electoral eligibility, and citizenship determination.
• The Court clarified that the ECI may examine citizenship only for deciding inclusion or exclusion from voter rolls.
• However, deletion from the electoral roll does not amount to declaring a person a non-citizen.
• Final determination of citizenship remains exclusively with authorities under the Citizenship Act.
• This distinction is significant because it prevents the SIR from becoming an indirect or “backdoor NRC”. The Court thus attempted to preserve constitutional due process.

Additional Relief Granted by the Court:

• The SC directed the ECI to refer all persons deleted from the 2003 Bihar rolls on citizenship grounds to the competent authority within four weeks.
• If such persons are later found to be citizens, their names must be restored to the electoral rolls.
• On paper, this appears to be an important procedural safeguard against wrongful exclusion.

The Central Critique - Revision or Fresh Enumeration?

• The Court failed to examine the most important objection: the present exercise was not merely a “revision” but effectively a de novo/afresh enumeration.
• For nearly three decades, electoral rolls had been refined through periodic summary revisions, reportedly achieving around 99% accuracy.
• Even the 2024 Lok Sabha elections were conducted using these rolls without serious challenge.
• The criticism is that the ECI discarded this accumulated institutional work and forced massive re-verification upon voters merely to correct residual inaccuracies.
• Thus, the exercise arguably exceeded the meaning of “SIR” under Section 21(3) - a major legal and conceptual gap. 

Vulnerable Groups at Risk:

• The use of the 2003 electoral roll as the baseline means all voters enrolled after 2003 must undergo re-verification.
• This disproportionately affects the first-time young voters, migrant labourers, women newly added through voter awareness programmes like SVEEP, and economically weaker citizens lacking formal documents.
• Ironically, democratic deepening aimed to incorporate these same populations. Therefore, the judgment risks undermining decades of voter inclusion efforts.

Documentation Burden and Democratic Exclusion:

• The Court upheld the ECI’s documentation requirements as a valid exercise of administrative discretion.
• However,
  • India’s socio-economic reality:
    • Large numbers of poor citizens lack stable documentary proof of residence or identity.
    • The Elector’s Photo Identity Card (EPIC), previously treated as reliable proof, has effectively lost its value in the present exercise.
  • Creates the possibility of exclusion not because voters are ineligible, but because they cannot navigate bureaucratic requirements.

Judicial Review - A Remedy Beyond Reach?

• The Court suggested that wrongly deleted voters could challenge exclusion through judicial review - an unrealistic remedy for ordinary citizens.
• A poor daily wage labourer may not even know their name has been deleted, may never access draft rolls, lacks legal literacy, time, and money to approach courts.
• Thus, judicial review becomes a remedy available primarily to the privileged, not to the most vulnerable voters who face exclusion.

Administrative Feasibility Concerns:

• The Court directed citizenship-related disputes to competent authorities under the Citizenship Act and required completion before the next election.
• The criticism here is practical:
  • No existing administrative infrastructure can handle millions (~90 lakh deletions in West Bengal and ~74 lakh deletions in Tamil Nadu draft rolls) of cases quickly.
  • The judgment prescribes no consequences for non-compliance.
  • Delays could leave citizens excluded from multiple elections.
• Hence, the safeguards may remain ineffective in practice.

Conclusion:

• A voter roll is not merely an administrative record; it is a citizen’s proof of democratic belonging.
• If large numbers of poor citizens lose that recognition in the pursuit of “clean rolls,” the legitimacy of the democratic process itself comes under scrutiny.