बेबाक · Editorial
Special Intensive Revision: Extended Deadlines Are Not a Substitute for Due Process
The ECI's extended timelines in six States and Union Territories help, but a revision that a Supreme Court petition says dropped over 2.06 crore names from Maharashtra's draft rolls must answer the questions the apex court will now examine.
What has changed
The Election Commission of India has revised the schedule of its Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Telangana, Nagaland and Delhi, following requests from the chief electoral officers. In Telangana, the notice phase now runs until November 26, with final publication of the voters' list due on November 30. The extensions come as the Supreme Court has issued notice to the Commission, the Centre, the Chief Electoral Officer and the Maharashtra government on a plea challenging the Maharashtra exercise. That plea says over 2.06 crore voters were excluded from the draft rolls. The Court declined to extend the deadline itself without first hearing the Commission.
The core tension
Two legitimate duties now meet. Clean electoral rolls are a constitutional necessity. Duplicate entries, dead voters and outdated addresses weaken the vote as surely as exclusion does, and an intensive revision is the Commission's proper tool to fix them. Yet the franchise is the citizen's most basic stake in the republic. A wrongly deleted name cannot be repaired after polling day. The question is not whether rolls should be revised. It is who carries the burden when a name is in doubt, how much time citizens get to respond, and whether those most likely to be dropped can use the remedy at all.
Both sides, fairly
The Commission's strongest case is that a revision with no firm deadlines never ends. Its readiness to revise timelines in six States and Union Territories when chief electoral officers asked suggests responsiveness, not rigidity. The Supreme Court was also right to hear the Commission before overriding its calendar, because institutions should not be bypassed on the strength of a petition alone. The petitioners' strongest case is scale. If the figure of over 2.06 crore draft exclusions in Maharashtra holds, it is no clerical margin. It would demand an explanation of method, notice and verification. The Commission has yet to answer the challenge in court, and until it does, the reasons behind that figure remain untested.
Trust is the real roll
Electoral legitimacy rests on public confidence as much as on accurate lists. Here too there are warning signs. The Delhi High Court has issued notice on a plea against the blocking of the entire 'Bring Back Ballot' Instagram account, which has over 50,000 followers. The petition calls the action disproportionate, unreasoned and taken without notice. One need not agree with a campaign to see the danger. Silencing scepticism about the electoral process, without stated reasons, deepens the very distrust that a transparent revision is meant to dispel.
The way forward
The Commission should publish, constituency by constituency, the number of names deleted from draft rolls and the grounds for each category: death, shifting, duplication or non-verification. It should not wait for the Supreme Court to demand this. No name should be struck for non-verification alone without documented notice to the voter and a visit by a booth-level officer. Claims and objections should stay open, with simple paperwork, until the final publication date in every State and Union Territory under revision. In Maharashtra, the Court should hear the matter well before the final rolls are frozen. A vindicated revision is worth more than a fast one.
In a republic, the burden of proving a citizen's absence from the rolls must rest on the State, not on the citizen to prove their presence.
What this editorial rests on
Drawn from our live multi-newsroom feed — read the reporting at source.
An editorial is the considered opinion of the FarziUPSC desk, argued from the sourced reporting above and written under our published persona, बेबाक. We name institutions, not parties. If we are wrong, we will say so. How we work →