UPSC Darpan

Polity & GovernanceGS221 September 2026

Delhi SIR Notices Reach an Election Commissioner, L.K. Advani, S. Jaishankar and a Dead Economist

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The news

New Delhi. The special intensive revision (SIR) of Delhi’s electoral roll — a fresh, house-to-house re-verification of every elector rather than the usual annual update — has generated notices against some of the most prominent names in the capital. The Election Commission published Delhi’s draft roll on August 31 after weeding out 47.56 lakh electors declared absent, shifted, dead or duplicate (The Indian Express). The EC’s centralised portal, ECINET, then began flagging electors in two categories: “no mapping”, where an elector cannot be linked to the roll of the last intensive revision (2002 in Delhi), and “logical discrepancies”, where current details differ from the old roll. The Hindu puts the number of electors facing notices at 33.1 lakh and The Economic Times at 33.13 lakh; The Indian Express reports 31.63 lakh. Election Commissioner Sukhbir Singh Sandhu, was flagged for a “self-name mismatch” in the Delhi Cantonment constituency; the constituency’s Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) said on Sunday that his entry had since been validated after “details, facts and documents” were verified. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and his wife, L.K. Advani and two family members, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri, former Chief Election Commissioners Sushil Chandra and Arun Goel, and CBI Director Praveen Sood were flagged for “no mapping”; Chief Minister Rekha Gupta, Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia are also on the list. Comptroller and Auditor General K. Sanjay Murthy faces a notice for “parent name mismatch”. Economist Bibek Debroy, former chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council who died in November 2024 aged 69, appears as a 70-year-old elector flagged for no mapping, The Hindu found. At two New Moti Bagh booths alone, 594 electors — largely senior serving and retired bureaucrats — received notices. The Delhi Chief Electoral Officer said a notice “does not mean” deletion and that no name can be removed without a hearing and “a proper, speaking, and appealable order”. Claims and objections close on October 30; the final roll is due on November 4. The Congress’s Jairam Ramesh said two SIR phases (Bihar from June 2025, then nine States and three Union Territories from November 2025) deleted 7.8 crore names, 13% of the pre-SIR roll, and that 5.43 crore more electors have been served notices; he put the share of Delhi voters facing deletion risk at 53.73%. The syllabus link is direct: Articles 324-326 and the Representation of the People Act, 1950.

The chain in one line: Roll last intensively revised around 2002 → SIR mandates linkage of every elector to that old roll → centralised software flags every unmatched or mismatched entry → 33 lakh notices in Delhi, including an EC member and a dead man → burden of proof shifts to the elector before an ERO hearing

Static syllabus linkage

  1. Three Articles build the franchise, and Article 325 is the anti-exclusion clause. Article 324 vests the superintendence, direction and control of the preparation of electoral rolls and the conduct of elections in the Election Commission. Article 325 provides one general electoral roll for every territorial constituency and bars exclusion from it on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex or any of them. Article 326 guarantees adult suffrage to every citizen aged 18 or above who is not otherwise disqualified; the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18 by the 61st Amendment, 1988. Citizenship, age and ordinary residence are therefore the three conditions an ERO actually tests.
  2. The RPA, 1950 — not the 1951 Act — governs the roll. The Representation of the People Act, 1950 deals with the allocation of seats and the preparation of rolls; the 1951 Act deals with the conduct of elections and disputes. Section 21 of the 1950 Act requires the roll to be prepared and revised, and Section 21(3) empowers the Commission to direct a special revision at any time for reasons recorded. Section 16 lists the disqualifications for registration, including not being a citizen, and Section 22 permits correction of entries. Detailed procedure lies in the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960.
  3. The ERO is the statutory decision-maker, and every decision is appealable. The Electoral Registration Officer, usually a revenue or civic officer, is appointed under Section 13B of the 1950 Act and decides claims and objections after notice and hearing. An appeal lies to the District Election Officer and onward to the Chief Electoral Officer of the State under Section 24. The Supreme Court in Lal Babu Hussein v. Electoral Registration Officer (1995) held that a person already on the roll cannot be struck off on suspicion alone, and that the authority must give a fair opportunity and weigh all evidence. This is why the Delhi CEO’s promise of a “speaking and appealable order” is a legal requirement, not a courtesy.
  4. Election Commissioners now sit under a 2023 statute. The Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Term of Office) Act, 2023 provides for appointment by the President on the recommendation of a selection committee of the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha and a Union Cabinet Minister nominated by the Prime Minister. The Commission has been multi-member since 1993. A CEC can be removed only in the manner of a Supreme Court judge, while other Election Commissioners can be removed on the CEC’s recommendation, under the proviso to Article 324(5).

Why UPSC loves this

  1. Electoral roll integrity is a GS2 staple that the SIR has made current. The syllabus names “salient features of the Representation of People’s Act” and “appointment to various constitutional posts, powers, functions and responsibilities of various constitutional bodies”. UPSC has asked on the Election Commission’s independence and on electoral reforms repeatedly in Mains, and Prelims has tested Articles 324-329 and the difference between the 1950 and 1951 Acts.
  2. The examinable tension is the burden of proof. Prelims will ask who prepares the roll and under which Act; Mains will ask whether a revision that requires the elector to prove linkage to a 2002 roll is consistent with universal adult franchise. A candidate who can cite Section 21(3), the ERO’s hearing duty and Lal Babu Hussein will score above one who writes only about “voter disenfranchisement”.
  3. Today’s list is the best case study you will get. When the software flags an Election Commissioner, a CAG, a Foreign Secretary and a man dead since 2024, it demonstrates in one sentence both the thoroughness and the crudeness of algorithmic verification. Use the example; do not use the names in a Prelims answer.

Prelims nuggets

  • Article 324 vests superintendence, direction and control of the preparation of electoral rolls and the conduct of elections to Parliament, State Legislatures, and the offices of President and Vice-President in the Election Commission.
  • Article 325 provides for one general electoral roll for every territorial constituency and prohibits exclusion on grounds only of religion, race, caste or sex.
  • Article 326 provides for elections on the basis of adult suffrage; the qualifying age was reduced from 21 to 18 years by the 61st Constitutional Amendment Act, 1988.
  • Preparation and revision of electoral rolls is governed by the Representation of the People Act, 1950; Section 21(3) empowers the Election Commission to direct a special revision of the roll at any time.
  • The Electoral Registration Officer is appointed under Section 13B of the RPA, 1950; appeals against the ERO’s decisions lie to the District Election Officer and then to the Chief Electoral Officer under Section 24.
  • Under the CEC and Other ECs Act, 2023, Election Commissioners are appointed by the President on the recommendation of a committee of the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha and a Union Cabinet Minister nominated by the Prime Minister.
  • The Chief Election Commissioner can be removed only in the like manner and on the like grounds as a judge of the Supreme Court; other Election Commissioners can be removed only on the CEC’s recommendation.

Analysis

  1. A notice to an Election Commissioner is evidence that the filter is blind, which is both its defence and its indictment. The EC can fairly argue that a system which flags its own member and the CAG is not targeting anyone; neutrality of the algorithm is the best answer to the charge of partisan purging. But the same fact proves that the matching rule produces false positives at scale among people whose eligibility is beyond doubt. If an Election Commissioner can fail a name-match, a migrant labourer whose name was transliterated three different ways certainly will. The error rate is the same; what differs is the cost of clearing it.
  2. The real change is the shift of burden from the State to the citizen. Under the ordinary summary revision, the State had to show a reason to remove an entry. A “no mapping” flag inverts that: the elector must now demonstrate a link to a roll prepared about 24 years ago. Lal Babu Hussein said suspicion alone cannot strike a name off, and the Delhi CEO’s statement reaffirms that no deletion without a hearing. The question for Mains is whether a hearing is a real safeguard when 33 lakh people must attend one within roughly two months, before claims close on October 30.
  3. A dead man on the draft roll cuts against the Commission’s own premise. The SIR is justified as a cleansing exercise, and Delhi’s draft roll already removed 47.56 lakh names as dead, shifted or duplicate. Yet Bibek Debroy, whose death in November 2024 was national news, survived that cleansing and was flagged only for “no mapping”. The deletion stage and the verification stage are therefore not talking to each other; death registration data, which the State already holds, was evidently not used to clean the roll.
  4. The three papers’ different totals are a governance point, not a footnote. The Hindu reports 33.1 lakh notices, The Economic Times 33.13 lakh, and The Indian Express 31.63 lakh. For a process whose legitimacy rests on precision, the absence of a single published, constituency-wise figure from the CEO invites exactly the suspicion the exercise is meant to dispel. Publishing the numbers by category — no mapping, self-name mismatch, parent-name mismatch — would cost nothing and settle half the political argument.
  5. The counter-view deserves its full weight. Rolls that carry the dead, the shifted and the duplicated are themselves a threat to free and fair elections, because every ghost entry is a potential false vote. An intensive revision is expressly permitted by Section 21(3), and India has done them before. The defensible position is not that the SIR is illegitimate, but that its verification design should rely more on data the State already holds and less on documents the elector may never have been given.

Possible Mains question

“The special intensive revision of electoral rolls has transferred the burden of proving eligibility from the State to the elector.” Examine this statement in the light of Articles 325 and 326 and the Representation of the People Act, 1950. Suggest safeguards that would preserve both the accuracy and the inclusiveness of the roll. (15 marks, 250 words)

Model approach

  1. Introduction. Define the SIR in one line as a fresh, door-to-door re-verification under Section 21(3) of the RPA, 1950, and state that Delhi’s draft roll has produced notices to over 31-33 lakh electors, including an Election Commissioner — a single example that frames the problem.
  2. Body — The constitutional and statutory frame. Article 324 for the EC’s power, Article 325 for the single roll without exclusion, Article 326 for adult suffrage; Sections 16, 21, 22 and 24 of the 1950 Act, and the ERO’s duty to hear. Cite Lal Babu Hussein (1995) for the principle that suspicion cannot justify deletion.
  3. Body — Where the burden shifts. Explain “no mapping” and “logical discrepancy” flags generated by ECINET, the requirement to link to a roughly 2002 roll, and the time window up to October 30. Contrast the ease with which a senior official is validated with the difficulty a poor or migrant elector faces. Note the dead-elector example to show the cleaning stage and the verification stage are disconnected.
  4. Body — The case for the SIR. Concede that inflated rolls threaten electoral integrity, that the power is explicit in law and that the Delhi CEO has committed to speaking, appealable orders. A balanced answer earns more than a one-sided one.
  5. Conclusion. Propose concrete safeguards: use of death and migration data held by the State before issuing notices, publication of category-wise figures by constituency, a longer window for hearings with doorstep verification by BLOs, and a presumption in favour of electors already on the roll unless there is positive evidence of ineligibility.

Administrator's brainstorm

You are the ERO of a constituency with 1.5 lakh notices and six weeks to the close of claims. How do you prevent the hearing from becoming a formality?

First triage the notices: self-name and parent-name mismatches are usually spelling issues that a Booth Level Officer can resolve at the doorstep with any one identity document, so dispose of them in bulk. Reserve formal hearings for true no-mapping cases, and schedule them by locality with SMS intimation so that daily-wage earners are not asked to queue repeatedly. Record reasons in every order, because an unreasoned deletion will be set aside in appeal and will cost more time than it saved. Report category-wise progress daily to the District Election Officer so that the bottleneck is visible before the deadline, not after.

A senior officer’s entry is validated within a day, while a slum resident’s identical mismatch is still pending. A journalist asks you why. What do you say?

Acknowledge the fact rather than deny it, because the timestamps are on record. Explain that the officer produced documents immediately, and that the office’s duty is to ensure the same speed for everyone, which it has not yet achieved. Then act: send a BLO to the resident that week, and issue an internal instruction that no category of elector gets out-of-turn disposal. Equal treatment in a verification drive is not only fairness; it is the only thing that keeps the whole exercise credible.

As a member of an interview board, would you support using Aadhaar or death-registration databases to clean electoral rolls automatically?

I would support using them to generate leads, not to delete names. The Debroy case shows that State databases can catch errors the SIR missed, and a death record matched to an elector should trigger a field check. But automatic deletion on a database match would repeat the very error of the present process — treating a data mismatch as proof of ineligibility. The final act of removing a citizen from the roll should remain a reasoned, human and appealable decision.