More questions than answers: Congress on SC verdict over SIR

Referring to the Supreme Court judgment, Singhvi cited Paragraph 171, stating that the “formal and final determination of citizenship cannot be done by the Election Commission,” and lies instead with the competent authority under the Citizenship Act under the Ministry of Home Affairs. He alleged that despite this, voters had been excluded from electoral rolls on grounds linked to citizenship.

“Is this not a contradiction? Should this not have invited closer scrutiny from the Supreme Court?” the Senior Supreme Court advocate said.

He further pointed to observations in Paragraphs 97 to 100 of the judgment, claiming that the Court itself had noted deficiencies, gaps and errors in the ECI’s process, which were subsequently addressed through petitions filed by political parties and civil society groups.

A major concern highlighted by Singhvi was the “compressed timeline” of the exercise. He said the SIR was conducted for “crores of voters within four to five months” in states such as Bihar and West Bengal, arguing that the process should have begun much earlier to ensure accuracy and fairness.

“If SIR had been initiated a year in advance, many of these issues would not have arisen,” he said, adding that the sequencing of deletion before adjudication had resulted in voters being removed from rolls ahead of elections, with appeals being decided later.

Citing data from West Bengal, Singhvi claimed that nearly 80 per cent of appeals against deletions were being allowed, suggesting that a large number of removals were later found to be incorrect. “If such trends persist on a large scale, it raises serious questions about the credibility of elections,” he said.

Moreover, litigants too described the ruling as a “dark day for the judiciary”. The BJP, however, hit back by defending the apex court and accusing the critics of undermining democratic institutions.

Supreme Court advocate Prashant Bhushan described the ruling as a “dark day for the judiciary”, alleging that elections in several states had already been conducted on the basis of a “totally partisan” SIR exercise in which “more than 10 per cent voters were deleted” through a “non-transparent process”.

Political activist and one of the litigants, Yogendra Yadav, slammed the judgment and the court’s handling of the matter. In a post on X, Yadav said he did not attend court to hear the verdict because, according to him, “the case was decided long ago”. He argued that the Supreme Court had gradually shifted focus away from examining the constitutionality of the SIR process and instead confined itself to grievance redressal issues. Yadav alleged that the court effectively allowed the Election Commission to continue with elections and subsequent phases of SIR despite unresolved constitutional concerns..

Reacting strongly to the criticism, BJP IT department head Amit Malviya said it was “deeply unfortunate” that a litigant before the Supreme Court had chosen to question the motives of the country’s highest constitutional court after receiving an unfavourable verdict.

The SC on Wednesday upheld the constitutional validity of the SIR of the electoral rolls undertaken by the Election Commission, saying it advanced the constitutional imperative of free and fair elections.

The verdict came on petitions filed by the Association of Democratic Reforms, Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Mahua Moitra, RJD MP Manoj Jha, Congress MP KC Venugopal, NCP (SP) MP Supriya Sule, activist Yogendra Yadav and others challenging the Election Commission’s notifications for SIR in Bihar and other states.