SIR - A Violation Of Spirit Of Universal Suffarage
The Election Commission of India is conducting the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in 12 states and Union Territories. The SIR was first held in Bihar.
Published : January 11, 2026 at 6:31 AM IST
By Arundhati Dhuru and Sandeep Pandey
When India became independent, its people got universal suffrage as a fundamental right because of the visionary leaders of the freedom movement. It was seen as quite a natural thing in a democracy for people who were deprived of even basic civil rights under a foreign rule.
Before the process of Special Intensive Revision started, an effort was made to enlist everybody living in India as a voter, and people were encouraged to vote on some other form of identity proof if they did not happen to possess Electoral Photo Identity Cards (EPIC) and their names were there on the rolls.
It was assumed that foreigners would not vote unless they had lived in India long enough to acquire Indian citizenship. Hence, everybody who considered themselves Indian citizens had a right to vote. This is the idea of universal suffrage. Now, with the arrival of SIR, the concept of universal suffrage has been disrupted. It is not a mere revision as its name stands for. It is making voters’ lists afresh.
The stated purpose of SIR is to remove dead, duplicate and permanently shifted people. But in reality, it is eliminating a number of other categories of people who would have made it to the list if a mere revision was being carried out.
Let us take the case of Uttar Pradesh, which has an adult population of 16.1 crore. The state has just now also concluded revision of its voters’ list for the upcoming panchayat elections by Booth Level Officers, doing a door-to-door survey in which the number of voters stands at 12.7 crore.
This is only the rural voters. However, in the process of SIR undertaken in the entire Uttar Pradesh - rural and urban - by the Election Commission of India (ECI), where an enumeration form was asked to be filled out by each of the 15.4 crore voters on the electoral rolls, only 12.6 crore could return their forms.
This implies that the number of voters in the entire Uttar Pradesh after the SIR process is less than the voters on rolls for panchayat elections just for the rural areas! How do we explain this anomaly? In addition to dead, duplicate and permanently shifted voters, there were other categories of voters who did not return their enumeration forms to their BLOs.
There are voters who filled out their forms online in spite of it being a very tedious process. The mobile number of the voter must be linked to their Aadhar Card and EPIC, and their name on the two cards must exactly match. Don't ask the question why the voter should reveal their Aadhar Card number, an option they have when filling the enumeration form manually; otherwise, you can’t move ahead in the online process.
When the voter goes again to the ECI website to check the status of their enumeration form, the link opens a fresh form to fill out. The voters who submitted their forms to their BLOs and whose forms have been subsequently uploaded get a message on the website that their forms have already been submitted.
A complaint has been filed with the Chief Election Commissioner on December 18, 2025, regarding such enumeration forms successfully filled online, which failed to generate a ‘form already submitted’ message from the ECI website when checked later. The complaint did not elicit a response either.
There are voters who possess a valid EPIC, but when they check the status of their EPIC on the ECI site, it says ‘no result found.’ It appears that their names have been removed accidentally or deliberately. But technically, as they possess EPIC, their names should have been there on the current voters’ rolls.
The grave question is, why did they not get their enumeration form? As they did not get any enumeration form, they could not submit any, meaning their names will be missing when the ECI publishes its draft rolls.
There are voters who don’t possess an EPIC, but their names or their parents’ or grandparents’ names appear in the last SIR list of 2002-03, meaning thereby that they pass the citizenship test of ECI. But as they have not received any enumeration forms, they too could submit any. Their names too would not appear on draft rolls.
Then there are voters who have their names in the current voters’ lists, but they were displaced by the government en masse due to some development project, like the residents of former Akbar Nagar in Lucknow. Their BLO did not give them the enumeration forms, claiming that they had permanently shifted to another Vidhan Sabha.
The correct procedure should have been to give them the enumeration forms and simultaneously get Form 8 filled by them for the change of their address. Such voters also could not submit any enumeration forms and will find their names missing from the draft rolls.
However, all voters of the above categories whose names will be deleted from the draft voters’ list are being asked to fill form 6, which is filled by a first-time going to be voter. While filling this form, an undertaking has to be given that they were not there in any electoral roll in the past.
Hence, the authorities are asking people to lie when filling the form 6, and this raises doubts about whether the genuine voters like the above-mentioned cases from among the close to 3 crore names eliminated as a result of the SIR process, will ever be able to make it to the electoral rolls?
It is quite clear that instead of choosing a simple door-to-door survey as was done for revising the lists for upcoming Uttar Pradesh panchayat elections, the SIR process of asking people to fill out enumeration forms has eliminated about 18 per cent of voters, a large number of them genuine ones.
A basic question also arises for Uttar Pradesh as to why two different processes were adopted for revising voters’ lists for two different levels of elections in the process generating two markedly different lists for the same adult population? Can there be a more succinct example of bureaucratic insolence, mismanagement and waste of public time and money, not to mention the precious lives of BLOs who became victims of all this. Does this not go against the spirit of universal suffrage?
(Arundhati Dhuru is with the National Alliance of People’s Movements. Sandeep Pandey is with the Socialist Party (India).)
(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writers. The facts and opinions expressed here do not reflect the views of ETV Bharat)
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