"Special Intensive Revision Excludes Crores from Electoral Rolls, Raising Governance Concerns"
Special Intensive Revision (SIR)
An ECI-conducted exercise to verify and update electoral rolls intensively across constituencies.
Booth Level Officer (BLO)
A ground-level government functionary responsible for verifying voter details and updating electoral rolls at the booth level.
The Representation of the People Act, 1950 and the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 form the legal backbone of India's electoral roll system. The Election Commission of India (ECI), a constitutional body under Article 324, is responsible for superintending, directing, and controlling the preparation of electoral rolls. Rolls are not prepared from scratch periodically; instead, they are maintained through a continuous process of annual revisions, additions, deletions, and corrections. Booth Level Officers (BLOs), drawn from the district administration, are the ground-level functionaries who verify voter details, process applications, and update rolls at the polling-booth level. Political party agents are also formally integrated into this process as a check.
The system is designed to be self-correcting over time. Section 21 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 empowers the ECI to conduct special revisions of electoral rolls when it deems necessary. Historically, intensive revisions have been used to clean up rolls in specific constituencies or states where data quality was suspected to be poor. The current Special Intensive Revision (SIR) is, however, unprecedented in its geographic scale and the volume of names it has placed under scrutiny simultaneously.
An electoral roll is the definitive list of persons entitled to vote in a constituency. Inclusion on the roll is a prerequisite for exercising the right to vote, which the Supreme Court has recognised as a constitutional right flowing from Article 326 (universal adult suffrage) and as integral to the democratic structure protected under the Basic Structure doctrine. A citizen who is wrongly excluded from the roll has no vote on polling day, regardless of their citizenship status.
The SIR process works in stages. First, a draft roll is published after BLOs conduct door-to-door verification. Names that cannot be verified, due to absence, migration, documentation gaps, or spelling mismatches, are excluded from the draft. A claims-and-objections period then follows, during which excluded persons can apply for reinstatement. The final roll is published after this window closes. …
How many Delimitation Commissions have been constituted by the Government of India till December 2023?
Which of the following correctly describes the constitutional significance of the right to vote in India?
1.The right to vote is explicitly listed as a Fundamental Right under Part III of the Constitution.
2.Article 326 provides for elections to the House of the People and State Legislative Assemblies on the basis of adult suffrage.
3.The Supreme Court has recognised the right to vote as a constitutional right integral to the democratic structure protected under the Basic Structure doctrine.
Select the correct answer using the code given below:
Match the following constitutional provisions with their subject matter:
List I (Provision) — List II (Subject Matter)
A.Article 324 — 1. Universal adult suffrage
B.Article 326 — 2. Superintendence of elections by ECI
C.Article 355 — 3. Duty of Union to protect states against external aggression
D.Article 21 — 4. Right to life and personal liberty
Select the correct match:
Consider the following statements regarding the electoral roll system in India:
1.The Election Commission of India derives its power to superintend electoral rolls from Article 324 of the Constitution.
2.Article 326 provides the constitutional basis for universal adult suffrage and every adult citizen's right to be enrolled as a voter.
3.The Representation of the People Act, 1950 empowers the ECI to conduct special revisions of electoral rolls.
How many of the above statements are correct?
With reference to the Assam National Register of Citizens (NRC), consider the following statements:
1.The final NRC list published in 2019 excluded 19.06 lakh people.
2.The exercise was conducted under the supervision of the Supreme Court of India.
3.The total expenditure on the Assam NRC exercise was approximately Rs 1,600 crore.
How many of the above statements are correct?
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