Election Commission of India, SIR and ECINet: Should the Right to Vote Become a Fundamental Right?

The Election Commission of India (ECI) finds itself at the centre of the most serious institutional controversy in its recent history. On 23 September 2026, an Indian Express investigation reported that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had recorded 14 objections over ten months against decisions taken under Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar, relating to alleged unilateral changes to rules, voter additions and deletions, and centralised data access. On 26 September the ECI responded with a press note announcing procedural fixes, which The Hindu’s editorial of 28 September described as “damage control”, and which the Congress called a “desperate attempt” that “hides all and reveals nothing”.

The controversy is not merely political. It goes to the heart of Article 324, under which the Constitution vests “superintendence, direction and control” of elections in the Commission. The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, the ECINet software that centralises roll management, and the collegiality of the three-member Commission are all now questioned. Over 2,000 citizens, including academics, retired officers and lawyers, have written an open letter to the Chief Justice of India urging suo motu proceedings, and the INDIA bloc is due to meet on 30 September to discuss the matter.

For UPSC aspirants the issue combines several examinable strands: the constitutional status of the right to vote, the independence of constitutional bodies, judicial review of administrative action, the appointment law of 2023, and the interface between technology and citizens’ rights. It is a classic GS-II case study, and an obvious candidate for an Essay on “institutions and public trust”.

Background and Context

The SIR was first rolled out at scale in Bihar in 2025 and then extended to other States in phases. It shifts the burden of enrolment from the state to the elector, with names dropped from draft rolls unless the elector submits documents. The Supreme Court ruled on the exercise on 27 May 2026, after it had already become a settled fact in several States.

Five Important Key Points

• The Indian Express report of 23 September 2026 said the two Election Commissioners recorded 14 objections in ten months to decisions taken under the CEC.
• The report also found that 97 eligible voters in Goa stayed off the rolls because ECINet did not allow ground-level Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) to reverse erroneous deletions.
• The Hindu’s editorial notes that more than 13 crore names were removed from draft rolls under the SIR, while the Congress puts the figure at nearly 14 crore.
• In Kuldip Nayar v. Union of India (2006), a Constitution Bench held the right to elect to be a statutory right under Section 62 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, not a fundamental right.
• The Hindu’s editorial says over nine in ten appeals decided by West Bengal’s tribunals restored deleted voters, indicating the scale of wrongful deletion.

Constitutional and Legal Framework

Article 324 vests the superintendence of elections in the ECI, Article 325 bars exclusion from the general electoral roll on grounds of religion, race, caste or sex, and Article 326 guarantees adult suffrage. Statutorily, the Representation of the People Act, 1950 governs electoral rolls (Section 19 grants registration to citizens aged 18 or above, “ordinarily resident” in a constituency; Section 21 empowers the ECI to prepare and revise rolls), while the 1951 Act governs conduct of elections. The Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Term of Office) Act, 2023 provides in Section 17 that business be conducted in accordance with the Act, and in Section 18 that decisions be taken unanimously as far as possible, failing which by majority. The reported 14 objections therefore raise a question of whether the CEC has bypassed the Commission’s collegiate process.

The Legal Status of the Right to Vote

The Constituent Assembly’s Advisory Committee declined to place the right to vote among fundamental rights, despite proposals by Dr B.R. Ambedkar and K.T. Shah. In N.P. Ponnuswami (1952) the Court had treated the right as statutory. Kuldip Nayar (2006) reaffirmed this, while a two-judge Bench in Rajbala v. State of Haryana (2015) called it constitutional. In Anoop Baranwal v. Union of India (2023), the Court left the question settled by Kuldip Nayar, but Justice Ajay Rastogi, dissenting, read the right into Article 19(1)(a) and Article 21. The practical consequence of the statutory status is that Parliament can regulate the right by ordinary legislation, and courts review restrictions on a lower standard than for fundamental rights.

Technology, ECINet and the Problem of Accountability

The Goa episode shows a design failure rather than a clerical error. If software prevents an ERO, the statutory officer, from correcting a wrong deletion, then in practice decentralised statutory authority is overridden by a centralised platform. The consequences extend beyond voting: the Hindu reports that Goa’s Mediclaim Scheme, covering dialysis, angioplasty and transplants, uses electoral rolls to establish eligibility. Roll exclusion therefore becomes exclusion from welfare. Courts have historically tolerated only errors that “materially affect” an election outcome, a threshold that is ill-suited to systemic, software-driven exclusion.

Institutional Independence and the Appointment Law

The 2023 Act replaced the Chief Justice of India on the selection committee, established in Anoop Baranwal, with a Union Cabinet Minister, leaving the committee of the Prime Minister, Leader of the Opposition and a Minister with a built-in government majority. The Hindu’s editorial argues the ECI should be reconstituted by a selection committee that does not give the government an overriding majority. The removal protection under Article 324(5), which shields only the CEC in the same manner as a Supreme Court judge, while other commissioners can be removed on the CEC’s recommendation, compounds the vulnerability of dissenting commissioners.

Political and Federal Dimensions

The Congress alleges “mass disenfranchisement” and the “targeted removal of marginalised voters”, while BJP Chief Ministers, including Delhi’s Rekha Gupta, insist that only invalid, duplicate and deceased entries are being removed and that “vote theft” claims are false. The Hindu reports that in one-third of Delhi’s seats the draft rolls have fewer electors than voted in 2025. Such disputes weaken the perception of neutrality, which is the ECI’s real capital. Comparatively, India’s approach contrasts with countries such as the United Kingdom and Canada, where registration is shifting toward automatic or data-linked enrolment that places the burden on the state rather than the citizen.

Bihar Connection

Bihar was the laboratory of the SIR in 2025, when the draft roll dropped by roughly 65 lakh names from about 7.89 crore, and the Supreme Court in that phase asked the ECI to accept Aadhaar as an additional document for identity. Migration is critical here: lakhs of Bihari workers live outside the State for long periods, and “ordinary residence” under Section 19 becomes a difficult test for them. Women, the poor and migrants are the groups most exposed to wrongful deletion, which is why Bihar’s experience is cited by both sides of the current debate.

Way Forward

First, ECI procedure should be codified: agendas circulated in advance, minutes recorded, and dissent notes made public, as the press note partly promises. Second, ECINet should be audited by an independent expert body, with ERO powers of correction restored and every deletion supported by a reasoned, individual order, in line with the 1995 ruling that removals must be individually reasoned, as the editorial recalls. Third, deleted electors should be reinstated on a presumption of eligibility unless proved otherwise, rather than being asked to reapply. Fourth, the selection committee for Election Commissioners should be reformed to include a neutral member. Finally, Parliament may consider a constitutional amendment making the right to vote explicitly fundamental, which would invite stricter judicial scrutiny of restrictions.

Relevance for UPSC and SSC Examinations

For UPSC, this is relevant to GS-II (Constitutional bodies, Representation of the People Acts, electoral reforms, judiciary and executive relations, transparency and accountability) and to GS-IV (integrity of institutions, public trust); it is also useful for Essay. For SSC, it covers Indian Polity: Articles 324 to 329, the structure of the Election Commission, and voter eligibility. Key terms to remember: SIR, ECINet, Article 324, Article 326, Section 19 and Section 21 of RPA 1950, Kuldip Nayar (2006), Anoop Baranwal (2023), Rajbala (2015), CEC and OEC Act 2023, ERO, ordinary resident.