The knock on the Supreme Court’s door

It is welcome, then, that the SC has made it clear that it did not approve of the changes made to Form 6, which made the process of registration of new voters more daunting.

3 min readOct 6, 2026 06:00 AM IST First published on: Oct 6, 2026 at 06:00 AM IST

This newspaper’s investigation that shone a light on the functioning of the Election Commission of India in the context of the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls has raised serious questions. They have to do with a multi-member body, a constitutional authority, shrinking, many a time, into a one-man show, undermining the checks and balances within. More fundamentally, these questions touch the citizen’s sacrosanct right to shape her own and the nation’s future through the right to vote. On Sunday, Justice Ujjal Bhuyan framed the issues in all their breadth and gravity. Large-scale disenfranchisement caused by the SIR, he said, is a violation of the Constitution, and detaching the citizen from the right to vote is like “taking out the soul from the body”. He referred to debates in the Constituent Assembly to underline the transformational vision and the constitutional guarantee. “… years of freedom struggle and the revolt against foreign rule made the adoption of universal adult franchise a natural choice and an essential ingredient of democracy…” Equal vote with equal value, regardless of identity and social location, was the first step in a new nation to achieve equality. As the Supreme Court takes up cases related to the modalities of the SIR, and the EC’s appointment process and functioning, it would do well to listen in to Justice Bhuyan’s outlining of what is at stake. Former SC judge Rohinton Fali Nariman underlined it: Also on Sunday, he said that the SIR’s removal of voters put the right to vote, which is at the “heart of our democracy”, in “great peril”.

These are not just the concerns of two individual judges, they reflect the disquiet the Supreme Court needs to address to repair the damage done by its troubling silence. The citizen’s fundamental right to participate in the electoral process has to be protected at all costs. But even as the EC went back on its own record of inclusiveness, even as it shifted the burden of proof onto the vulnerable voter and set up a hurdle race at every stage of the SIR, the Court kept giving it the benefit of every doubt. Going ahead, therefore, not just the EC, the Court is also on test.

It is welcome, then, that the SC has made it clear that it did not approve of the changes made to Form 6, which made the process of registration of new voters more daunting. It is reassuring, too, that it wants answers from the EC on aspects of the decision-making within. With due respect, the Court must keep asking questions, again and again. It has a formidable record of affirming the sanctity of Article 324 that secures the Election Commission, it should ensure that remains without stain. For, as one its own members said, this is about the soul of the nation.