Is the Election Commission stealing proof of your citizenship under the guise of voter lists? The Supreme Court will draw the line today! ‘Circus’ of voter list and citizenship! Today the Supreme Court will give the country’s biggest decision on the limits of the powers of the Election Commission.

Since the implementation of the Constitution, today is going to be a very historic day in the Indian history regarding the electoral process of the country, the structure of the voter list and the voting rights of the citizens. Today i.e. on Wednesday (27 May 2026), the Supreme Court will give its final verdict on a big and fundamental legal question, which is going to decide the future of crores of voters of the country and the constitutional powers of the Election Commission of India.

A three-member special bench of the Supreme Court, comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice VM Pancholi, will give its verdict on petitions directly challenging the validity of the special scrutiny of voter lists being conducted by the Election Commission in various states. The apex court mainly has to decide whether the Election Commission has the legal right to conduct such a campaign in its present form under Article 326 of the Constitution, the Representation of the People Act 1950 and the rules attached thereto.

What is this ‘SIR’ process and why did such a big controversy arise?

Last year, the Election Commission had started a special campaign from Bihar on June 24, 2025, which in technical language was called Special Intensive Revision (SIR) It is said. Under this process, in the name of purification of voter list, documentary proof of their being Indian citizens was sought from such voters, whose record was not found in the voter list of the year 2002 or 2003.

Initially, the Commission had made 11 categories of difficult documents mandatory for this, but later after the strong intervention of the Supreme Court, it was allowed to include Ration Card, Voter ID and Aadhaar Card as the 12th identity document. The court did not completely stop this process then, but made it clear that they would definitely review the legal question whether the commission has the power to do so. The court had reserved its decision on this on January 29 this year.

Petitioners’ serious allegation: “This is a secret NRC being run by the Election Commission”

Major civil organizations of the country like Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) as well as many senior opposition leaders have reached the court against this special campaign. These include Rajya Sabha MP Manoj Jha, Yogendra Yadav, Mahua Moitra, KC Venugopal, Pappu Yadav and RJD MP Sudhakar Singh.

The petitioners’ lawyers have argued in court that:

• Wrong timing and cascading effect: Due to the timing and the large scale with which this entire process was carried out just before the state assembly elections, the names of lakhs of genuine and valid voters suddenly disappeared from the list. For example, in West Bengal, just before the April 2026 assembly elections, the names of more than 91 lakh voters were removed from the list.

• Unfair burden of proving citizenship: The petitioners say that according to the old established legal system (Lal Babu Hussain Case 1995), if someone’s name is already registered in the voter list, then he is considered an Indian citizen. But this SIR campaign, on the contrary, put the responsibility on the common citizens to present old documentary and ancestral evidence to prove themselves as citizens of India.

• Violation of Jurisdiction: The opposition clearly alleges that only the Central Government and the Foreigners Tribunal have the legal authority to decide or check the citizenship of a person in the country, the Election Commission has no such constitutional right. The Commission itself is behaving like a citizenship checking agency here.

Election Commission’s defense: “It is our constitutional duty to stop fake voters and infiltrators”

On the other hand, the Election Commission (ECI) has strongly defended its move in the court. Senior lawyers appearing for the Commission argued that Article 326 of the Constitution gives the right to vote only to Indian citizens. In such a situation, it is the highest constitutional responsibility of the Commission to ensure freedom, fairness and purity of elections.

The Commission’s argument is that they are not legally revoking or fixing anyone’s permanent citizenship, rather they are merely verifying for electoral purposes that no non-citizen or outsider can vote by being included in the voter list of the country. The Commission has called it a legitimate administrative exercise to make the voter list completely transparent and error-free.

In which states of the country has this process reached what level?

This process continued in different parts of the country even when the decision was reserved by the Supreme Court. Let’s take a look at its current ground situation:

This historic decision of the Supreme Court coming today will decide the direction of this ongoing process not only in Bihar or Bengal but in all those states like Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Rajasthan, where the work of the third phase is going on. If the Court makes any strict comment on the jurisdiction of the Commission, then there is sure to be a major reshuffle in the electoral politics and administrative system of the country.