After the Bihar election, the SIR process was made nationwide, including in states that went to polls recently like West Bengal, Assam, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry. Political parties including the Indian National Congress, Communist Party of India, Communist Party of India (Marxist), All India Trinamool Congress, Samajwadi Party, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Rashtriya Janata Dal and many others opposed the way exercise was done, alleging that the ECI was favouring Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, ahead of Assembly elections in different states. Following the demand from the opposition, the Modi government was even forced to hold a parliamentary debate on the disputed Special Intensive Revision in winter session of Parliament.

During last one year or so, ever since the SIR was started, we have witnessed normalization of the disenfranchisement of large number of voters in the country. What is worse, the disenfranchisement is taking place as the Election Commission has sought to disregard the demands of opposition parties and the electorates while the Supreme Court of India has remained silent witness. And all this is done in the name of cleaning up voter lists, the fundamental document for the conduct of elections, by ensuring that the names of all and only eligible voters appear in it.

In West Bengal, where the disenfranchisement generated maximum heat, lakhs and lakhs of electors could not exercise their voting rights in the just held Assembly election simply because the Election Commission failed to complete a task it had taken upon itself. In October 2025, before the beginning of the SIR in West Bengal, the state’s electoral rolls had 7.66 crore names. By the time Assembly election was held, nearly nine million voters became victims of the SIR-led disenfranchisement in the state.

The EC is the constitutionally mandated body to conduct elections on the principle of adult suffrage. It has been vested with extensive powers so that it can ensure the sanctity of the process, which also includes the preparation of the electoral rolls. By not ensuring that every single eligible voter could become part of the democratic process to elect the government in the state, the EC has failed itself, as well as the people of West Bengal, the Constitution and the very idea of electoral democracy in India. Lakhs of citizens were made to watch helplessly the conduct of the election in their own state without their participation in it. Those at the helm of the EC know it very well that a small swing in the vote percentage can be decisive in an Indian election. They have, therefore, forfeited their right to continue in the office.

The Constitution, after all, is an article of faith between the State and the citizen about some of the solemn rights the latter would enjoy. Right to vote is among the most sacrosanct and inviolable rights the Constitution guarantees to its citizens. It is because of this reason that the Constitution mandates the Supreme Court to step in if and when the State uses its might to trample on those rights. The Supreme Court has to carry out this duty even if a single person’s rights are hampered by the state. However, even the apex court was not seen discharging its duties. It did not do enough when large numbers of people were kept out of the democratic process in West Bengal.

The way the SIR is being done in the country has diminished the stature of India at the global level. The entire SIR process of preparing electoral rolls based on documents and legacy linkage and large scale deletion of voters, especially those belonging to minority communities, constitute an extremely detrimental reflection on Indian democracy. These are serious affronts on the idea of India as visualised by freedom fighters and makers of our Constitution. They are threatening to vitally impair ability of India’s citizens to democratically act against those wielding power, thus severely damaging the cause of Indian democracy.

The SIR is, thus, carefully designed to remove the demographic impediment faced by the BJP in its desperate bid to overcome popular anger. As was seen in West Bengal, it was obediently executed by an army of outside officials who were deployed in the state by the Election Commission, and it was repeatedly certified by the Supreme Court.

The SIR has created a deeper concern among political parties as well as people as whether a level playing field would exist in the first place, and whether meaningful elections would ever be fully allowed to take place.

No less significant is the question as to what would happen to those whose names were deleted in the process. In the aftermath of elections, in the absence of a sustained media gaze, they may find it even more difficult to get their grievances redressed.

When all citizens are not allowed to take part in elections, when elections produce large numbers of dubious wins and when deletion of names of voters and coercion and pressure on opposition parties’ candidates become a norm, the democratic process begins to lose its meaning.

Indian democracy is faced with the key question – what does it mean when elections are contested like this? There is another question as well and that is how to make institutions that are mandated to protect mass democracy work in the interest of its citizens?

Unless these serious questions pertaining to the failures and lapses of the constitutional bodies are looked into, they might upset the foundational principles of this country sooner or later. For today, Indian democracy is waiting at cross-roads. (IPA Service)