SIR: Electoral Integrity, Not Voter Exclusion

Nowadays Special Intensive Revision (SIR) has become the discussion for any two individuals due to continuous opposition buzz on SIR. Many of the opposition parties are claiming that SIR is disenfranchising the poor, minorities and migrants. But they should also know that deletion of any voter from the electoral roll is not automatic. In the process, voters will get time to object, assistance from the booth level officers, appeals and re inclusion mechanism is also there.

Not a New or BJP-Driven Exercise

SIR can reinforce that every eligible voter can have only one vote and it can lead to One Person One Vote. Free and fair elections are the heart of any democratic system. To ensure fair elections, cleaning and updating the electoral rolls is pivotal. If elections are to be fair and free, the voter list must be accurate. SIR is for electoral integrity and not for voter exclusion. Electoral integrity comes from the periodic correction. Revising the voter list is not new for India and not ruling BJP's Jimmick. Under Article 325 of the Constitution of India, the Election Commission of India (ECI) has conducted 13 intensive revisions since Independence.The last revision took place in 2004, after that it did not take place.

After more than 20 years, the ECI initiated another intensive revision in 2025. This gap itself justifies the need for SIR, given the massive demographic, social, and geographic changes India has experienced over the past two decades—along with developments in neighbouring regions. In the past, any two consecutive electoral roll revisions did not take place after 20 years. SIR is thus a routine constitutional exercise, essential to maintaining the credibility of elections.

Bihar Results: Claims vs Facts on SIR

As of now, SIR has been completed in Bihar. It is ongoing in West Bengal, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, and 12 other states. Despite this, some critics argue that SIR is designed to favour the BJP and facilitate “vote chori” (vote theft), allegedly targeting opposition parties such as RJD (Bihar), DMK (Tamil Nadu), Leftists (Kerala), Congress (MP, Rajasthan etc) and TMC (West Bengal).

Some people went ahead and argued that, because of SIR, the RJD-Congress led alliance lost in Bihar. But interestingly, facts are quite opposite. If we observe Bihar elections voting pattern which was held recently, RJD has secured the highest vote share with 23 percent and won 25 seats, BJP secured 89 seats with 20.08 vote share, JDU secured 19.25 percent of vote share with 85 seats. In the 2020 Bihar assembly elections, the RJD and BJP almost secured the same vote share without SIR. As some people are arguing SIR meant for vote theft, If that is true, then the opposition led RJD should not have emerged as the largest party (in vote share) among all in recent Bihar elections. The reason for the RJD-Congress alliance’s loss could be lack of election engineering when compared with the ruling BJP-JDU alliance.
BJP’s Organisational Advantage on SIR:

When compared with others, BJP is far ahead than any other party in creating awareness on SIR and it has owned the narrative of SIR at an early stage. BJP has been holding continuous meetings at every tier state unit, district and mandal level, ward and booth levels. Its karyakartas and workers are personally contacting and getting in touch with voters and supporting them in the process. For instance in UP, BJP has set up war rooms and mera booth sabse mazboot in all 1.62 lakh booths. It also appointed multiple agents for each booth. They work even in a weak or opposition dominated constituency. These booth level agents use SIR as a large-scale membership and data gathering exercise at gross root levels. This ground level work helps the party to recover many of the genuine voters who might, otherwise those names would have been deleted from the draft list.

A Missed Opportunity for the Opposition:

Questioning of EC on SIR may weaken the institutions without proof. Alleging bias without evidence leads to undermining the public trust on institutions, which is not good for health democracy. Instead of criticizing the SIR and EC, opposition parties can conduct workshops and meetings with district level, booth level leaders. Booth level functionaries can assist the voters. Rather than resisting SIR, adopting the narrative of SIR will help the opposition parties in many ways like democracy defender, direct access to vulnerable voter segments, helps them in house to house contact, helps in gathering data and booth intelligence etc.

SIR is a constitutional, routine, and necessary exercise aimed at strengthening electoral integrity. Treating it as a partisan conspiracy distracts from real organisational weaknesses. Democracy is best protected not by resisting institutional processes, but by participating in them effectively.