Supreme Court upholds Election Commission’s right to conduct SIR in Bihar

The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that the Election Commission of India (ECI) has the power to conduct the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls under Article 324 of the Constitution and the Representation of the People Act.

The SC upheld the legality of the SIR after a clutch of petitions challenged the exercise conducted last year in Bihar.

The petitioners had argued that the SIR was an NRC-like citizenship verification exercise by the backdoor and questioned the statutory basis of the process. But the SC did not find anything unlawful in it.

The SC bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi ruled that the SIR cannot be invalidated merely because it does not conform in every respect to the ordinary modalities contemplated for routine revision when the statute itself authorises a special revision at any time for reasons and manner the Election Commission may deem fit, according to Live Law.

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"In our considered opinion, the impugned SIR does not supplant the Representation of the People Act and the Rules. Rather, it breathes life into the constitutional mandate under Article 324 within the precise statutory contours provided by Section 21(3). Therefore, it cannot be said that the Commission has acted in excess of its statutory powers," Kant and Bagchi further said.

At the same time, the bench ruled that the Election Commission’s decision in the SIR does not amount to a determination of a person’s citizenship.

The judgment comes after Kant and Bagchi reserved the verdict on January 29 in the case.

The SC had begun final arguments in the case on August 12. At the time, it observed that the inclusion or exclusion of names in electoral rolls falls within the constitutional mandate of the Election Commission.

After the SIR in Bihar, the Election Commission launched the second phase of the exercise in nine states of Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal, and three union territories of Andaman and Nicobar, Lakshadweep, and Puducherry.

In the recent West Bengal elections, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) claimed it lost because of the deletion of names from electoral rolls under the SIR.