Institute of Legal and Management Studies

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] has approached the Supreme Court challenging the constitutional validity of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Tamil Nadu, alleging that the Election Commission of India's (ECI) move is “arbitrary, illegal, and unconstitutional.”

The petition, filed by P. Shanmugam, Secretary of the CPI(M) Tamil Nadu State Committee, seeks to quash the ECI's order dated 27 October 2025, which mandated completion of the SIR exercise within a month.

Shanmugam, a senior leader and the first Dalit to head the CPI(M) in Tamil Nadu, contends that while the objective of ensuring purity and inclusiveness in electoral rolls is not disputed, the SIR process as notified is “manifestly impractical, humanly impossible, and contrary to the Representation of the People Act, 1950 and the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960.”

According to the petition, the ECI's notification directs that enumeration be carried out between November 4 and December 4, 2025, covering the entire electorate of over 6.18 crore voters in Tamil Nadu. Each Booth Level Officer (BLO) has been assigned nearly 500 households per day for issuing, filling, and verifying enumeration forms, a task that the petitioner terms “humanly impossible,” arguing that a BLO can meaningfully visit only 40 to 50 households a day.

The petition points out that the overall SIR schedule, from October 28, 2025 to February 7, 2026, allows barely 102 days for all stages of the process, including enumeration, verification, publication of draft rolls, scrutiny, objections, and final publication. The petitioner argues that such a compressed schedule defeats the very object of an intensive revision and violates the principles of procedural fairness and reasonableness implicit in Articles 14 and 324 of the Constitution.

No legislative backing

The CPI(M) leader submits that the SIR has no statutory basis and amounts to a “colourable exercise of power” by the Election Commission. The petition asserts that while Article 324 gives the ECI powers of superintendence, it cannot override the legislative framework laid down under the Representation of the People Act, 1950 (ROPA) and the 1960 Rules.

It adds that under Section 28(3) of the ROPA, any procedure governing electoral rolls must be notified in the Official Gazette and placed before Parliament, a process not followed in this case. “No such statutory notification or parliamentary oversight exists, rendering the entire SIR exercise devoid of legal authority,” the plea states.

Fears of disenfranchisement and discrimination

The petition warns that the SIR, if implemented, could result in “mass and unjustified disenfranchisement of genuine voters”, particularly among marginalised, migrant, and under-documented communities. It criticises the earlier Bihar SIR guidelines (which form the model for Tamil Nadu's exercise) for excluding commonly available documents such as Aadhaar and EPIC cards, and for mandating fresh proofs of citizenship, a requirement the petitioner says has led to confusion and exclusion elsewhere.

Although the ECI later clarified that documents need not be collected during enumeration in Tamil Nadu and that Aadhaar cards are admissible for verification, the petitioner maintains that the process remains deeply flawed and vulnerable to arbitrary exclusions.

The petition also accuses the ECI of overstepping its constitutional limits by empowering officials to undertake citizenship verification and refer “suspected foreign nationals” under the Citizenship Act, 1955. Such directions, it argues, amount to the initiation of a “de facto National Register of Citizens (NRC)” exercise, a function beyond the ECI's remit.

Furthermore, the CPI(M) contends that the unilateral imposition of this extensive verification process on Tamil Nadu, without consultation or coordination, violates the principle of cooperative federalism. The state, it argues, has been reduced to a “mere implementing agency of a centrally determined exercise.”

It may be noted that the DMK, the ruling party in Tamil Nadu, has also approached the Supreme Court against SIR. The Court will hear the DMK's matter tomorrow.