The Supreme Court of India on Wednesday upheld the legality of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise being carried out by the Election Commission of India (ECI), but made it clear that removing a person’s name from the voter list does not mean they lose Indian citizenship.
A bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant said the SIR process is only meant to check whether a person is eligible to vote and not to decide citizenship status.
The court said the Election Commission can examine citizenship only for the limited purpose of deciding whether someone’s name should stay on the electoral roll.
“The commission can delete names from the voter list, but that does not mean the person is no longer an Indian citizen,” the court said.
The case was being heard after several petitions challenged the SIR exercise, arguing that it was indirectly being used as a citizenship verification process.
The controversy began after the Election Commission started the SIR process in Bihar last year and later expanded it to states like West Bengal, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu.
Under the process, voters whose names were not present in the 2002 or 2003 electoral rolls were asked to provide documents showing family or ancestral links.
The Election Commission defended the exercise, saying it was necessary to clean voter lists and check eligibility.
The Supreme Court also directed the Election Commission to send details of people removed from voter rolls due to doubtful citizenship to the Union Home Ministry for further verification under the Citizenship Act 1955.
The court said the Home Ministry must complete the process before the next elections and give affected individuals a chance to present their side.
The judges further said that if a person is later found to be an Indian citizen, their name must be restored to the voter list.
The court also noted that documents such as birth certificates, domicile certificates, school records, passports, and land records were accepted during the SIR process as proof of identity and eligibility.
However, the larger issue of what documents should finally be accepted as proof of citizenship may now depend on future guidelines from the central government.
