THE CONTEXT: On 10 July 2025 the Supreme Court of India allowed the Election Commission of India (ECI) to continue the State-wide Special Intensive Revision of Bihar’s electoral rolls but asked it to accept Aadhaar, Elector Photo Identity Card and ration cards as valid documents, observing that “the right to vote lies at the root of the republic”.
THE BACKGROUND: HOW UNIVERSAL ADULT FRANCHISE BECAME INDIA’S STARTING POINT
-
- Constituent Assembly rejected property or literacy filters that had persisted for decades in Britain and the United States. Article 326 entrenched adult suffrage (initially 21 years, lowered to 18 years by the Sixty-First Constitutional Amendment, 1989).
- Sukumar Sen’s 1951–52 logistical breakthrough of using easily recognisable symbols enabled 173 million mostly illiterate citizens to vote.
- Subsequent jurisprudence from Kesavananda Bharati (1973) to Mohinder Singh Gill (1978) treated free and fair elections as part of the basic structure.
CONSTITUTIONAL & STATUTORY ARCHITECTURE:
| PROVISION | CORE IDEA | RELEVANCE |
|---|---|---|
| Article 324 | Superintendence, direction and control of elections vested in ECI | Scope and limits of ECI’s autonomy |
| Article 325 | Single general electoral roll for every constituency | Ban on religious, racial or caste‐based rolls |
| Article 326 | Elections based on adult franchise | Voter inclusivity principle |
| RPA 1950, Sec 19 | Ordinary residence criterion | Test in Manmohan Singh (1991) |
| RPA 1950, Sec 21 | Annual & special revisions of rolls | Interpretation in Lakshmi Charan Sen (1985) |
| Registration of Electors Rules 1960, Rule 8 | Documentary proof “to the best of ability” | Central to Bihar SIR dispute |
A Constitution Bench in Kuldip Nayar v Union of India (2006) reaffirmed that the “right to elect” is statutory, yet multiple benches have called it a “democratic imperative”.
CURRENT SCENARIO: THE 2025 BIHAR SPECIAL INTENSIVE REVISION
-
- Trigger: ECI order dated 24 June 2025 invoked Sec 21(3) RPA 1950 to re-verify roughly 4.74 crore electors (60 % of the electorate).
- Operational tool: Thirteen-page Enumeration Form-1 plus upload on ECINET, a blockchain-secured portal.
- Supreme Court intervention: Batch of writs; Court kept the process alive but broadened the accepted document set on 10 July 2025.
DRIVERS OF THE BIHAR EXERCISE:
-
- Data-authenticity push: ECINET pilot aims for tamper-evident voter database.
- Migration churn: Bihar’s out-migration is > 20 % of its population (Economic Survey 2024-25).
- Demographic politics: Narrow winning margins in 81 Assembly seats in 2020 raise stakes.
- Security narrative: Political rhetoric about “illegal migrants” parallels the National Register of Citizens
THEORETICAL LENS: ‘INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY’ VS. ‘PROCEDURAL PURITY’
-
- Inclusive democracy demands low entry barriers so every eligible citizen can vote.
- Procedural purity: an extension of the “free and fair” basic-structure doctrine demands clean rolls to prevent dilution of votes.
- The Bihar SIR highlights the classic constitutional tension between the two.
KEY STATISTICS:
-
- Registration coverage: Bihar’s enrolment ratio is 95.4 % of the estimated 18 & population (ECI, Jan 2025) but on-time birth registration is 81 % (Civil Registration System Report 2022).
- Digital divide: DoT dashboard shows only 40.5 % of telecom towers fibre-connected in Bihar versus 70 % national target.
STAKEHOLDER PERSPECTIVES:
-
- Opposition parties: Fear mass disenfranchisement of minorities and migrant workers.
- ECI: Calls SIR “a once-in-two-decades clean-up” necessary for accurate rolls.
- Civil society groups: Point to historic exclusion errors in Assam’s NRC and urge “inclusion first”.
- Supreme Court: Strikes a middle course-no stay but insists on broader document acceptance.
THE ISSUES:
-
- Statutory anchoring: Sec 21(3) permits special revision “for a constituency or part thereof”; State-wide exercise rests on a tenuous reading.
- Qualifying date deviation: Fixing 1 July instead of 1 January breaks the annual cycle, risking overlap with impending Assembly notification.
- Document deficit: Pre-2005 rural births seldom registered; elderly women least likely to hold birth certificates.
- Ordinary residence test: Seasonal migrants oscillate between two addresses, confusing BLOs.
- Technological exclusion: ECINET’s high bandwidth demands collide with patchy 3G/4G in flood-prone districts.
- Due-process vacuum: Mass deletions can occur without quasi-judicial orders unless explicit safeguards are built (cf. Lal Babu Hussein, 1995).
- Institutional credibility: Rejecting the very EPIC cards issued earlier erodes public trust.
- Political timing: Exercise launched four months before polls- perception of partisan advantage.
- Gender dimension: Female labour migrants in brick-kilns often lack any of the 11 originally prescribed documents.
- Fiscal cost: Estimated ₹ 110 crore for BLO allowances and digital scanning- unbudgeted in the State plan.
GLOBAL EXPERIENCE & INDIAN COMPARATORS
-
- United Kingdom: Annual canvass requires only self-attested household enquiry; documentary proof is exception-based.
- Canada: National Register of Electors auto-updates via tax and driving-licence databases; citizen need not re-submit documents.
- South Africa: Prohibits any mass deletion within six months of an election.
- Assam NRC (2019): Nineteen lakh exclusions underline humanitarian cost of document-heavy processes.
THE WAY FORWARD:
-
- Legislate a State-wide SIR clause: Amend Sec 21 RPA 1950 to allow State-level revisions in exceptional circumstances. This removes present legal ambiguity.
- Model Electoral Roll (Deletion) Rules, 2026: Codify notice, 30-day reply, and speaking-order requirements, mirroring Supreme Court directions in the Assam roll case. Uniform rules curb arbitrary BLO discretion.
- Sakala-style service guarantee: Treat voter-roll correction as a notified citizen service with a 15-day deadline and automatic BLO culpability for delay. Karnataka’s 2011 Sakala Act offers a proven template.
- Offline-first ECINET mobile app: Allow Booth-Level Officers to store data without connectivity and sync later, solving the rural bandwidth gap. Odisha panchayat polls (2022) piloted the code.
- Two functional IDs & one local witness rule: Permit any two of Aadhaar, EPIC, MGNREGA card, plus attestation by an elected ward member as prima facie proof. Aligns with Rule 8 “best of ability” standard.
- Migrant Facilitation Desks: Set up kiosks at railway stations and industrial clusters to issue residency attestations on-the-spot. Andhra Pradesh’s 2023 “Anywhere Enrolment” saw a 17 % migrant-registration jump.
- District Election Ombudsmen: Appoint retired District Judges to dispose of roll appeals within 15 days.
- CAG-empanelled social audit: Randomly verify 0.2 % deletions each year: lay report before Parliament.
- Hospital-linked birth registration: Make digital birth certificate a pre-condition for hospital discharge, with automatic API push to State CRS. Uttar Pradesh improved on-time registration by 11.8 percentage points (2022-24).
THE CONCLUSION:
The Bihar SIR episode reminds us that democracy is ultimately measured by who reaches the ballot, not merely by the constitution of supervisory bodies. The challenge is to marry procedural rigour with compassionate inclusion so that no eligible citizen is left unheard while no ineligible name distorts the mandate. By converting judicial guidance into statutory clarity, tech-enabled processes and citizen-centric safeguards, India can future-proof its “one person, one vote” ideal.
UPSC PAST YEAR QUESTION:
Q. Discuss the role of the Election Commission of India in the light of the evolution of the Model Code of Conduct. 2022
MAINS PRACTICE QUESTION:
Q. Analyse the constraints on the Election Commission of India’s power to undertake special revision of electoral rolls. In the backdrop of the 2025 Bihar exercise, suggest reforms that would reconcile electoral integrity.
SOURCE:
Spread the Word