PUCL Dialogues (VIII) - Special Intensive Revision: Exclusion by design, Disenfranchising citizens

Dec 07, 2025

Relevant State

PUCL organised an online discussion on 7th December, 2025 about the Special Intensive Revision, amidst the implementation of its second phase in 9 states and 3 union territories. The discussion was moderated by Kavita Srivastava, National President, PUCL and the speakers were Prashant Bhushan (Senior Advocate, Supreme Court), Yogendra Yadav (Bharat Jodo Abhiyan) as well as activists from various states: Madhuri from Madhya Pradesh, Albertina Almeida from Goa, Kaladas Dehariya and Sama from Chhattisgarh, EP Anil from Kerala, Sarfaraz from Bihar, Arundhati and Chittajit from Uttar Pradesh, Mujahid Nafees from Gujarat, Mamta Jaitly from Rajasthan and Balamurugan from Tamil Nadu.

Prashant Bhushan, Senior Advocate, Supreme Court

The exercise of intensive revision has been done before. It was done in 2003, but it has not been done in the manner in which it is being done today. Let me go in to what is unique about this current exercise.

Firstly, it is being done in a great hurry. Earlier, the ECI itself had said that if a state election is only six months away, the SIR will not be done in that state, simply because at least six months are needed to complete this exercise of intensive revision. However, the SIR is being done in a great hurry. In Bihar, the SIR was completed in less than three months. Even in other states, the SIR was scheduled to be completed within 3 months.

Secondly, the SIR is the first of its kind since India’s independence. This is an unprecedented exercise. Never before in the history of this country has a fresh voters list been prepared except in the first election in 1950–52. Never before have all people been expected to fill an Enumeration Form. Even those already on the voters’ list have been asked to fill a form. Whoever doesn’t fill it will be removed from the voters list.

Thirdly, earlier, the presumption was that you are a citizen of India. For the first time, this has been reversed. Now you have to prove that you are a citizen, even if you are already a voter. This is very dangerous.

In 1995, a Supreme Court judgement said that the ECI cannot ask a person to prove their citizenship. If the ECI suspects someone of not being a citizen, they are required to initiate proceedings to prove that they are not a citizen: issue them a show-cause notice and ensure that they have an opportunity to reply, explain and be heard. But now, they have reversed the entire process and are demanding to see documents that will decide a person’s citizenship. They are asking for passports, citizenship certificate, land records, matriculation certificate – these are being treated as proof of citizenship.

However, citizenship can only be decided by authorities under the Citizenship Act or under the Foreigners’ Act, such as the Foreigners’ Tribunal, a court or the Government of India. The ECI has no authority to decide on citizenship; it can only flag people who they consider as ‘doubtful’ and forward those matters to one of the authorities. The ECI on its own cannot remove somebody’s name on merely suspecting someone’s citizenship.

They have devised another type of NRC in the name of SIR. There is absolutely no transparency in this exercise. The lists of voters have not even been given in a machine-readable format in order to search for names or duplicates. They are not even giving complete information about the voters who have been deleted or added.

Fourthly, SIR is not an attempt to clean the electoral rolls. The Election Commission says they are just cleaning it up, removing dead names. That’s false. For example, if they were serious about removing inaccuracies they should have used duplication software to remove duplicate names. They did not do it. In Bihar, after the SIR, there were more than five lakh duplicate names within a constituency; across constituencies it was as high as 59 lakh. The Election Commission did nothing to correct it. Even small instances we produced in the Supreme Court — same photograph, same name, same constituency — were not removed in the final list used in Bihar. We showed about 75,000 blank and gibberish names; the Election Commission did nothing. Their own rule says that in a house with more than ten voters you should physically verify it; they did not do it. There were 21 lakh such houses in Bihar containing more than three crore voters; they were not checked.

The best way to determine the veracity of the rolls is a social audit. A meeting must be called of all the people of a particular booth, and their names must be read out one by one. People will tell you who has moved out, who died, who is a new voter and who was never there. In 2003, when a social audit was done in Rajasthan, 7 lakh names were corrected. They are not doing that now. The Election Commission wants this arbitrary power.

The Election Commission has no interest in cleaning up electoral rolls. The CEC himself said they don’t need duplication software which is provided for in their own manual. We showed examples where names were written in Kannada and Tamil; even those corrections were not made.

Fifth, SIR has nothing to do with wanting to eliminate illegal foreigners. If they were serious, they should have carried out SIR thoroughly in Assam. But in Assam they have an extraordinary order: they will check citizenship in all parts of India but not in Assam. In Assam you don’t have to fill any enumeration form; the BLO will come to your house, take the names and go back. So that’s strange and shows they have no interest in checking illegal foreigners. My simple submission: SIR is not a revision of voters list, SIR is not a routine exercise, SIR is not about cleaning the voters list, and SIR is not about removing illegal foreigners. What SIR is about is disenfranchisement; it is about doing NRC from the back door.

The Bihar exercise showed a scale of disenfranchisement we have never witnessed. Usually the ECI and its supporters say that voters’ lists are inflated and we need to throw out a few lakh names. How do we assess whether a voters’ list is inflated? You look at population figures based on government projections of adult population. For Bihar: adult population was 8.20 crore. How many people were on the voters list when SIR began? 7.89 crore. A good revision should move from 7.89 towards 8.20. What happened instead was the opposite: instead of covering up the deficiency, the SIR increased the deficiency. We went from 7.89 down to 7.45 in the final list. So instead of adding names it removed many — a deficit of about 75 lakh people in Bihar.

SIR led to disproportionate exclusion of women and Muslims. We have evidence submitted in the Supreme Court. In Bihar, for every 1000 men on the voters list, there were 916 women when SIR began; at the end there were 894 women for every 1000 men. At least seven lakh women who should have been on the voters list were thrown out because of SIR. Muslims were 18% of Bihar’s population, but among the 65 lakh people who were excluded, Muslims were 25%; among people whose names were deleted after the draft list, Muslims were 32%. So there is disproportionate exclusion of women and Muslims.

One would expect the Election Commission to learn from Bihar and revisit the exercise. They did not. They made a few minor changes to make their own life easier, but nothing fundamental. The same story is being repeated all over the country.

Yogendra Yadav, Bharat Jodo Abhiyan

I will start by mentioning four simple basic things for everyone to remember: what SIR is not.

SIR is not a revision of the voters list. It is a fresh rewriting of the voters list.
SIR of today is not a repetition of something that happened in the past. It is absolutely unprecedented. The Election Commission is lying when it says it’s routine because in 2002–03 what they did was entirely different. Two respects make it unprecedented: people were never asked to fill an enumeration form before, and the presumption of citizenship has been reversed.
SIR is not about cleaning the voters list. If they were serious about removing inaccuracies, they would have used duplication software. They did not. In Bihar, final voters’ list had more than five lakh duplicate names within a constituency and up to 59 lakh across constituencies.
SIR has nothing to do with eliminating illegal foreigners. If they were serious, Assam would have been thoroughly audited. Instead, SIR was not applied in the same way in Assam.

So what is SIR about? It is about disenfranchisement. Bihar showed that SIR led to a reduction in voters instead of correcting the deficit. Instead of moving from 7.89 crore to 8.2 crore, it went down to 7.45 crore. The total deficit is about 75 lakh voters.

SIR led to disproportionate exclusion of women and Muslims. Evidence was submitted in the Supreme Court. For every 1000 men, women dropped from 916 to 894; at least seven lakh women were thrown out. Muslims, though 18% of the population, were 25% of the excluded and 32% of those deleted after the draft list. Election Commission learned no lesson from Bihar.

We should tell this to everyone: SIR is not a revision, not a routine exercise, not about cleaning voters’ lists, and not about removing illegal foreigners. It’s about disenfranchisement and doing NRC from the back door.

Madhuri, PUCL – Madhya Pradesh

I would like to mention the issues that are unique to tribal areas. Firstly, tribal areas face internal colonization; tribal culture differs from non-tribal. There are a lot of differences in the name of a person across different documents, when it is being written by non-tribal officers. Most people in tribal communities have different names and spellings in different documents.

Secondly, it has already been reported in various states that women are facing challenges linking their names to the 2002 voter list. But in tribal communities, it is even more difficult because there are no documents.

Thirdly, it is the peak season of migration, and almost half the people in the villages have left their homes for work. Many people will be excluded because of this reason.

Fourthly, there are lakhs of fake voters in the voter lists here. We do not know how they plan on removing all these fake names.

I would therefore like to ask – what can be done in court about those who will be deleted from the final rolls?

Another issue is that Form 7, the form to be used for deletion of voters, has been given to BLOs everywhere. But Form 6, the form required for inclusion of new voters, has not been given to anyone.

Receipts or acknowledged forms that are supposed to be given to voters, are also not being given.

I stay in a tribal area in Barwani district, which does not have a history in communal tensions. Even here, BLOs here are saying that the names of Muslims have to be deleted.

BLOs are usually Anganwadi workers, many of whom do not know how to use a smart phone. They are unable to do the exercise as required.

Schools that run in tribal areas already struggle with limited resources, teachers and workers. All the teachers have been pulled out of school and are assigned these responsibilities. So the education infrastructure including Anganwadis and schools, that was already so scarce, has completely collapsed.

We need to challenge this exercise, but we are unable to understand how to do so.

Albertina Almeida, Activist, Goa

Goa has got a disproportionate high number of OCIs. CAA 2019 already set a precedent for arbitrarily setting up mechanisms for cancelling OCI registrations. SIR is another arbitrary process which will threaten this.

Another issue pertains to cultural points. Our system of naming is different. For example, my uncle’s name in the 2002 roll has his father’s name as his middle name. But this is not the culture for Catholics. So if there has to be a link between him and his progeny, there will be a problem because of the difference in names in documents. People are paying the price for the mistakes that were made in writing people’s names in 2002.

The third issue is that although they were not supposed to ask for documents in the Enumeration phase, there have been reports of people being asked to show their passports. There is a presumption that people from minority communities would be holding Portuguese passports. But people are unable to submit their passports.

The fourth point is that many groups are trying to create awareness about SIR. But we saw police being deployed in such places because they are not appreciating such efforts.

Goa’s history of entering the Union of India is unique, and the question of Portuguese citizenship arises. That is being used against the people. These are the issues specific to Goa, and we are seeing that it is only an endeavour of disenfranchisement.

Kaladas Dehariya, PUCL-Chhattisgarh

We have formed a coalition, through which we approached the CEO with the issues being faced by people in Adivasi areas. We have been demanding extension of deadlines and have also demonstrated to the CEO how Enumeration Forms are being incorrectly filled. BLOs were then instructed to correct those mistakes.

Another issue we raised is that a photograph was required to be submitted by people. In forest areas, we do not have studios or shops that can provide for photographs. BLOs were immediately instructed to inform people that photos were not mandatorily required to be collected.

There is no doubt that Adivasis, especially migrant workers, will be excluded from voter lists. We have formed teams in every district to assist people and ensure that no voter is left out.

Samaa, Chhattisgarh

I will go through some of the issues highlighted in Manish Kunjam’s petition. Manish Kunjam is a 2 time MLA, and the president of Adivasi Mahasabha. He has witnessed how lakhs of people are living without documents due to conflict, displacement and administrative neglect. Bastar is a Fifth Schedule area, which requires protection for Adivasi land, Adivasi culture and political representation. Any process that risks demographic change or deletion of voters should have come to Bastar with extra safeguards – not the speed and carelessness with which SIR is happening.

Bastar has been historically neglected by the state, and has been ridden with conflict which has caused a lot of displacement. The documents that are being asked in SIR are those which people simply do not possess. The state itself has burnt villages, as we know 644 villages were burnt during Salwa Judum. The villages are very scattered, and remote. You have to walk 8-10 kilometres by foot, you have to cross streams. It is impossible to expect BLOs to conduct door-to-door verification by visiting all the hamlets.

Past revisions that have taken place in the state have taken several months, but the timeline has been shrunk into 30 days in SIR.

Another issue is that villages are completely empty now. It is the season of paddy cultivation, and farmers are living in the fields. Others are migrating to TN and Andhra for work. The recent monsoons were very harsh, and many interior roads are still not accessible.

Lastly, Bastar is witnessing a historic moment, when a lot of people are enmasse surrendering, and are wanting to join the mainstream. These are people with no documentation. At the same time, almost the entire Bastar region is being auctioned off. Mining companies are opening, outsiders are coming to set up shop. These outsiders have documents, resources and connections. But the indigenous people of Bastar are not going to have these documents to show.

This will go on, as Bastar will be auctioned until nothing is left. The people who protected Bastar are going to be termed as illegal residents.

EP Anil, Kerala

The CEO-Kerala himself agreed that 20 lakh enumeration forms have not yet been filled and returned, and 50 lakh people will be expected to come back to their BLOs for clarifications regarding their enumeration forms. While double-voting is an issue, the data says that it is only 0.4% of the total voters.

According to the latest reports, they are unable to find 5.6 lakh people for the filling of enumeration forms. Elections have been won in Kerala with margins as slim as 1 lakh votes. Therefore, the SIR will directly affect the elections. Even if 1% of the voters are removed, it will have a very adverse impact in Kerala, politically.

New voters are being asked to produce the details of their parents in the 2002 list. People are extremely concerned with the approach of the CEO, and such arbitrary rules.

Sarfaraz, PUCL-Bihar

In Bihar, there were efforts from civil society as well as political parties to protest against SIR. But after elections were announced, parties went into election mode. The ECI strategically chose to start SIR in Bihar, when mass mobilisation was extremely difficult. The entire process was arbitrary. I personally know of several people who did not fill any enumeration forms, and yet have been included in the final rolls.

Arundhati, Activist, Uttar Pradesh

There was a huge settlement displaced from the centre of Lucknow in 2023, called Akbar Nagar settlement. When their case went to the Supreme Court, they were granted rehabilitation. Despite being a huge settlement, none of these residents have been given an enumeration form on the grounds that Akbar Nagar does not exist. Thousands of families were affected because of this, 99% of whom were Muslims. The CEO himself was confused about this and other similar cases, in which people have been displaced because of ‘bulldozer justice’. Another main issue is the impact being faced by transgender persons. Several of them neither have the documents, nor houses. They don’t even know that this exercise is going on. Similarly, single, abandoned women who are also homeless, are being impacted.

Chittajit, PUCL-Uttar Pradesh

In many cases, there is a mismatch of barcodes on the Enumeration Forms. There are also discrepancies in spellings in the 2003 list. The transgender community are particularly vulnerable in this aspect, because it is impossible for them to retrieve the details of their parents in the 2003 list.

Mujahid Nafees, Gujarat

There were many issues in the 2003 list itself. There was distortion of names, and members of families are not even grouped. Those who have faced displacement due to demolition were in distress as they could not link to the 2003 list, and will be deleted. Denotified Nomadic Tribes especially, who do not have permanent residence, will be affected. Some voters of the 2003 list do not appear in the 2025 list. BLOs are unable to give them the appropriate forms in order to be included in the voter roll.

We have been undertaking research, conducting trainings even for political party representatives. We are also running centres to assist people in filling forms and help BLOs.

Mamtha Jaitly, PUCL-Rajasthan

We have been undertaking massive awareness campaigns, and have been assisting people to fill their Enumeration Forms. We have been assisting BLOs, and have also regularly conducted online meetings to coordinate efforts. We also organised a state-level public hearing, and have approached officials at the local level as well as the state level. Several IAS officers and journalists have accompanied us in advocacy efforts, and have committed to standing by our campaign.

Almost 56% of South Rajasthan migrate to other states for work. Most such migrant workers do not return till April. They will be excluded from voter rolls, because the SIR has been planned in extremely unreasonable and short timelines.

There is immense pressure on BLOs and at least four BLOs have died in Rajasthan alone. Some are in hospital because of heart attacks.

Despite the Supreme Court’s order, Aadhar is not being accepted by BLOs as proof of name and age. Nomadic communities, transgender communities, women who have lived in homeless shelters and several communities who have no information about their parents – they will be undoubtedly excluded.

Women who have relocated after marriage and changed their names have documents with 2 different names, and have no way to prove that it is of the same person.

Due to changes in the wards and booths, several people have faced difficulties locating their names in the 2002 list.

Balamurugan, PUCL-Tamil Nadu

In Tamil Nadu, DMK is a tough opposition to the NDA. Partners of NDA are welcoming and celebrating SIR, thinking that it will win them their elections.

While the ECI issued a press statement saying 95% of the existing voters have been given their forms, and only 85% have filled and submitted them. We are anticipating that 85 lakh to 1 crore people will lose their right to vote which accounts for 14-16% of the total number of voters. In Chennai, 32% of the voters’ forms were not collected.

In tribal areas in the Nilgiri districts, people who have been displaced from the forest because of the tiger reserve, said that they have not been issued any Enumeration Form, and have not been visited by any official. In one village, they said they have received forms, but no official has come to collect the forms.

Another issue is that the Tamil translation of the Enumeration Forms is done incorrectly. This has also led to a lot of confusion.

Other issues we are facing are common to those being faced by other states.