Can’t we presume that voters who survived multiple roll revisions are citizens, Supreme Court poses petitioners’ query to ECI

The Supreme Court on Thursday, January 15, 2026, asked the Election Commission of India (ECI) a fundamental question that petitioners have repeatedly asked in their challenges to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls: “Can’t we safely assume that voters who have gone through multiple roll revisions are citizens?”

The question by Chief Justices of India Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi came in the backdrop of debates on the 1995 Supreme Court jurisprudence which stipulated that a person already registered in the voter list should not be asked to prove his citizenship. In the Lal Babu Hussain judgment, the court declared that the burden of proving citizenship would rest only on those applying for registration for the first time.

“The presumption or basis of this case [Lal Babu Hussain] If my name appears on the voter list, there is a presumption that I am a citizen. The assumption is that an official transaction [of revision] is done regularly. Voter lists are prepared under the auspices of a constitutional authority. Therefore, the degree of regularity of the official law attached to the voter list, whether issued by the SIR or prepared after a summary revision, allows for the presumption that a person is a citizen… This is the argument advanced by the petitioners,” observed Justice Bagchi, seeking a reply from senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, speaking on behalf of the EC.

Mr. Dwivedi said it was the EC’s constitutional duty to determine citizenship for the limited purpose of registering a person as a voter.

“There will be no other consequences to this. We are directing the deportation of a person. We cannot say how long you can stay in India. It is not our concern whether you have a visa to stay or whether you are recognized as a refugee or not. We are not interested in all that,” the senior lawyer said.

The Chief Justice said Mr. Dwivedi’s argument appeared to be that the ECI would not “determine” citizenship but would only “determine” whether a person is genuine and has a valid citizenship.

“If a person says I am not a citizen but I want to apply for citizenship and participate in elections, you [EC] will not be authorized for this. But if a person says that I am a citizen and my name will be included in the voter list, you have the right to investigate to determine the validity of his claim that he is a bona fide citizen,” the CJI summarized.

The Supreme Court questioned the Election Commission on deletion of voter registers and citizenship issues

Justice Bagchi asked whether the exemption given to voters in Bihar SIR from submitting indicative documents meant deletion of all electoral roll revisions that took place between 2003 and 2025.

Mr. Dwivedi argued that the electoral roll prepared after the January 2025 revision was also taken into account in the Bihar SIR.

He described the SIR study as a “soft-touch, liberal approach” that does not amount to a “review” or “judicial investigation.”

He said the EC’s raison d’être was to serve voters and increase adult voting rights.

“If your name was there in the 2003 voter list, we accepted that as evidence. If the name was not there, which was a rare case in Bihar, we looked for identity documents, including Aadhaar… The good thing about SIR is that in future everyone will have a document to show,” Mr. Dwivedi said.

He pointed out that out of the 65 lakh excluded in Bihar, no one had raised objections. Names have been deleted because the owners have died or moved elsewhere, or because duplicate entries have been made.

“Why them? [petitioners] I want dead people to be on the voter list, double entry. “It seems that someone wants to take advantage of this situation… No voter claiming false exclusion has come to court… Our duty is to maximize the right to vote… Disenfranchisement is a different concept from exclusion of dead voters or repeated entries in the voter list,” he said.