Cant we presume that voters who survived multiple roll revisions are citizens, Supreme Court poses petitioners query to ECI

The Supreme Court on Thursday (January 15, 2026) asked the Election Commission of India (ECI) a basic question which petitioners have repeatedly posed in their challenge to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls — “Can we not safely presume that voters who have survived multiple roll revisions are citizens?”

The question from the Bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi came in the backdrop of discussions over a 1995 Supreme Court case law, which held that a person already enrolled in the voter list should not be asked to prove citizenship. The Lal Babu Hussain judgment saw the court declare that the burden of proof of citizenship would be only on those applying for enrollment for the first time.

“The presumption or the foundation of this case [Lal Babu Hussain] is that if my name appears in the voter list, there is a presumption I am a citizen. The presumption is that an official act [of revision] is regularly done. The voter list is prepared under the auspices of a constitutional authority. So, the degree of regularity of the official act attached to a voter list, be it SIR-regulated or prepared after a summary revision, allows the presumption of a person being a citizen… This is the argument raised by the petitioners,” Justice Bagchi observed, seeking a response from senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, appearing for the EC.

Mr. Dwivedi said the EC was under a constitutional duty to determine citizenship for the limited purpose of registering a person as an elector.

“It will not have any other consequences. We direct the deportation of a person. We cannot say how long you may stay in India. We are not concerned whether you have a visa to stay or whether you are a recognised refugee or not. We are not concerned with all that,” the senior counsel submitted.

The Chief Justice said Mr. Dwivedi’s line of argument seemed to be that the ECI would not “determine” citizenship but only “identify” if a person was genuine and had a valid citizenship.

“If a person says I am not a citizen, but I want to apply for citizenship and participate in the elections, you [EC] will not be the authority for that. But if a person says I am a citizen, and my name is to be included in the voter list, you have a right to hold an enquiry to determine the validity of his claim of being a genuine citizen,” the CJI summarised.

Supreme Court questions Election Commission on voter roll deletions, citizenship

Justice Bagchi asked whether the exemption given to voters in the Bihar SIR from producing indicative documents had meant the effacement of all the electoral roll revisions which happened between 2003 and 2025.

Mr. Dwivedi defended that the electoral roll prepared after a January 2025 revision was also considered in the Bihar SIR.

He described the SIR exercise as a “soft-touch, a liberal approach” which did not amount to “scrutiny”or a “judicial inquiry”.

He said the purpose of the existence of the EC was to serve voters and to enhance adult suffrage.

“If your name is there in the 2003 voter list, we accepted it as a probative. If the name was not there, which was a rare situation in Bihar, we sought identity documents, including Aadhaar… The good thing about SIR is that in the future everybody will have some document to show,” Mr. Dwivedi said.

He pointed out that nobody out of the 65 lakh excluded in Bihar filed an appeal. Names were deleted because their owners were either already dead or migrated or in the case of duplicate entries.

“Why do they [petitioners] want dead people to be in the voter list, double entries. Looks like somebody wants to exploit the situation… No voter alleging incorrect exclusion has come to court… Our duty is to maximise enfranchisement… Disenfranchisement is a different concept from exclusion of dead voters or duplicate entries from the voter list,” he submitted.