Revision of Electoral Rolls | Day 28: Petitioners argue that voter ratios fell sharply after revision exercises

Hansaria: Aadhaar does not establish citizenship

Hansaria questioned the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) reliance on Aadhaar in the SIR exercise. He submitted that the Aadhaar can be issued to non-citizens too as it defines a “resident” as a person who has stayed in India for at least 182 days. He submitted that Section 9 of the Aadhaar Act, 2016 makes this position explicit, stating that Aadhaar “shall not, by itself, confer any right of, or be proof of, citizenship or domicile.”

Justice Bagchi questioned whether Hansaria’s objection implied that Aadhaar alone was prone to forgery. He observed that even passports were issued through private agencies operating under the authority of the Union Government. He added that in the case of Aadhaar, a public duty was discharged, even if through a private entity.Justice Bagchi further observed that once a document is recognised under a statute, it cannot be discarded merely because a private agency was involved in its issuance.

Hansaria responded that his objection was not premised on forgery, but on statutory limitation. He pointed out that no petitioner had sought the inclusion of Aadhar by way of a prayer and questioned whether the Court could issue a mandamus in the absence of such a plea. He argued that the Aadhaar could not be treated as a determinative document in an exercise determining citizenship by relying on the Unique Identification Authority of India’s data showing Aadhaar saturation exceeding 100 percent in several states.

Sibal: Who decides citizenship?

Sibal, making rejoinder submissions, drew the Court’s attention to Articles 325 and 326. He argued that the central question was whether the SIR was a rule-backed process. He argued that only the Government of India had the authority to decide questions of citizenship, not the ECI.

Justice Bagchi asked what happens where a person’s name was already on the electoral rolls or where a passport had been issued but was later found to be forged and an objection was raised through Form 7. He asked whether, in such a case, the ECI could strike the person off, requiring the individual to then approach the authorities for restoration.

Sibal responded that this effectively meant the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) would be deciding citizenship for the purpose of inclusion or exclusion from the rolls. He questioned the factual basis for linking the SIR to illegal migration, asking how many illegal immigrants had in fact been identified in Bihar. He also pointed out that data on new inclusions had not been disclosed.

Justice Bagchi noted that migration was one of the stated reasons for conducting the SIR and observed that outward migration from several states could not be denied. Sibal responded that such reasoning could not justify mass deletions across multiple states.

CJI Surya Kant remarked that deletions were an inherent part of correction and asked whether it was realistic to assume that no changes would have occurred between 2003 and 2025. Sibal acknowledged that updates were carried out annually, but argued that the present exercise was not an ordinary decision. “This judgement will decide the course of democracy in India,” he said, adding that such exercises could not be undertaken overnight.

Sankaranarayanan: Electoral rolls as proof of civic belonging

Sankaranarayanan submitted that the right to vote was a core right in a democracy and noted that voter identity cards were the only document with near-universal coverage among adult citizens. While passports covered only a small fraction of the population, electoral rolls extended to nearly 90 percent of adults, particularly those in villages and economically marginalised communities.

He argued that for such individuals, continued presence on the electoral rolls served as tangible proof of belonging, enabling them to exercise rights tied to citizenship. Sankaranarayanan argued that when documentation is questioned en masse, people live in fear of being treated as foreigners.

Turning to the Bihar SIR, he submitted that a cut-off date of 2003 had been introduced, shifting the burden of proof onto individuals who had already been on the rolls and had voted in multiple elections. He argued that this reversal of presumption was contrary to Article 326, which permits only four disqualifications and no others.

He further submitted that while Parliament could regulate the preparation of electoral rolls under Article 327, such regulation had to remain subject to Article 326. Sankaranarayanan argued that the Representation of the People Acts of 1950 and 1951  (RP Act) formed a single statutory fabric. While the 1950 RP Act governed electoral rolls, disqualifications flowed from the 1951 Act.

According to him, the SIR took away that entitlement without amending the Constitution, the statutes, or the rules and without invoking any valid order under Article 324.

Sankaranarayanan: Section 21 does not permit nationwide SIR

Sankaranarayanan argued that Section 21(3) permitted a special revision only for “any constituency or part of a constituency”, and not for all constituencies across the country. He submitted that subsections (1) and (2) dealt with general revisions, while subsection (3) allowed limited departures from prescribed procedures.

He relied on Lal Babu Hussein v Electoral Registration Officer (1995) to submit that there was a presumption in favour of voters already on the rolls and that removals could only occur through individual enquiries following due procedure. He pointed out that Sections 22 and 23 of the RP Act specifically dealt with corrections and inclusions, both requiring individual inquiries, and that appeals lay only against orders passed under those provisions.

He warned that treating Section 21(3) as a “catch-all power” left individuals without any statutory remedy, even for clerical errors or wrongful deletions.

Yogendra Yadav disputes claim of “no appeals”

Yadav submitted that electoral roll revisions must be assessed on “completeness, equity and accuracy.”

On completeness, Yadav submitted that the SIR had led to a sharp fall in the electoral population ratio in Bihar, which according to him indicated a “design defect” rather than an accidental outcome.

On accuracy, Yadav stated that he had drawn the Court’s attention on 9 October 2025 to serious errors in the Bihar rolls, including entries appearing in Tamil and Kannada. He submitted that despite this, the final electoral rolls were published on 17 October 2025 without correcting those errors. “Nothing was changed,” he told the Court. He added that all these facts were placed on record in his affidavit dated 3 November 2025.

On equity, Yadav submitted that “wherever the SIR has gone, women have been thrown out disproportionately.” He stated that the gender ratio declined in every state where the SIR was conducted and estimated that about 60 lakh women have been additionally excluded due to the design of the exercise.

Yadav also challenged the ECI’s repeated claim that there were no appeals. “The ‘no appeal’ claim is misleading,” he submitted, explaining that after the Court directed acceptance of Aadhaar as a document, there was no reason for individuals to approach the Court on document-related exclusions. He further stated that the ECI’s reliance on the absence of appeals in relation to 3.66 lakh deletions after the draft rolls could not explain the approximately 65 lakh exclusions that were not acknowledged as deletions at all. Referring to ECI’s own figures, Yadav stated that 36,475 claims for inclusion were made by persons from the excluded pool, but argued that this number understated the problem because the ECI had no system to distinguish new applicants from wrongly excluded voters.

On the basis of a computational analysis of the excluded list, he told the Court that 2,97,921 names reappeared in the final rolls, showing that large numbers of exclusions were corrected informally rather than through any recognised appellate process.

The Court will continue to hear rejoinder arguments tomorrow.