Supreme Court questions Election Commission on use of Form 6, ‘logical discrepancy’ notices to voters amid SIR

The Supreme Court on Wednesday asked the Election Commission of India (ECI) not to require nearly 4.3 million Delhi residents – whose names were removed from the electoral rolls after they could not be found at their last known addresses – to reapply as new voters through Form 6 under the ongoing special intensive revision (SIR), provided they were on the 2026 rolls.Instead, it suggested that such voters be permitted to restore their names through Form 8, which is intended for address-related changes, or through the enumeration process.

The court also made it clear that it had not upheld the Election Commission’s use of the “logical discrepancy” category to flag voters during the revision, saying the legality of the mechanism would have to be examined separately. It further questioned whether the criterion involved any meaningful human application of mind or was based on algorithm-driven patterns. The controversial category led to the disenfranchisement of 2.71 million people in West Bengal.'Approach voters, instead of leaving burden on them'A bench, comprising Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana, urged the poll panel to make the exercise more accessible and proactively reach out to voters who may have been left out of the draft electoral roll, rather than placing the entire burden on them to approach election officials.“Instead of burden on them that they will approach, why don’t you reach out to them?” the bench asked senior advocate DS Naidu, appearing for ECI, pointing to Delhi’s large migrant population, which frequently moves between localities and cities for livelihood.“Those already on the 2026 roll who merely shifted residence should be allowed to use Form 8, not be made to declare they were never enrolled.

Temporary absence is not a shift of residence…Being away on work for a month or two does not make an elector ‘permanently shifted’…You have to search 43 lakh odd people that where have they gone?” the bench told Naidu, while further pointing out ECI’s procedure had no remedy for electors who never shifted but were never served the form. Forms 6, 7 and 8, the court underlined, were “cast in stone”, clarifying the forms cannot be reworked and asking how a voter who has shifted can be made to file Form 6, which is meant for someone who was never enrolled.

“This structural incongruity...will you say the person forever loses right to come in roll?” it remarked.The bench also asked the commission to publish lists identifying voters whose enumeration forms were not received, indicating their previous electoral particulars and asking them to contact the nearest booth-level officer (BLO). It said the information should be readily available at polling booths and other accessible locations, enabling people to establish that they were already registered voters and had merely changed addresses.Hearing a plea filed by transparency activists Anjali Bhardwaj and Amrita Johri, the court said the commission should issue a public notice in simple language clarifying that Form 6 was intended for first-time enrolment in Delhi, while those who had shifted residence could use Form 8 or submit the relevant enumeration forms.

Advocate Prashant Bhushan argued for the petitioners.Importantly, the court also asked ECI not to insist on a cut-off date at this stage, and to continue accepting the relevant forms while verifying the information and seeking supporting documents wherever necessary, especially since there are no upcoming elections in Delhi. At present, October 30 is the last date to file claims and objections.“Keep on persuading people,” the bench told the poll panel, asking it to devise a mechanism to bridge the gap of nearly 4.7 million electors whose names were not carried forward to the draft roll published on August 31.Of the approximately 14.5 million electors at the start of SIR, around 9.7 million submitted enumeration forms, while about 4.7 million did not.Of the latter, roughly 0.28 million were recorded as deceased, another 0.14 million as duplicate, and about 4.3 million as permanently shifted or absent.

Within that 4.3 million, about 3.159 million were marked as permanently shifted and around 1.1 million as untraceable. Separately, about 3.3 million electors could not be mapped to the 2002 SIR, and 1.934 million were flagged as “logical discrepancies.”The bench asked ECI to return with details of the steps taken in two weeks, with Naidu agreeing to discuss the suggestions and indicating that the timeline would be extended.‘Right to vote is a vital right’: SCThe intervention came three days before the October 30 deadline for filing claims and objections in Delhi’s SIR.

The final electoral roll is now scheduled to be published on December 4, following an extension of the revision timetable.The bench said the objective should be to give every eligible voter a fair opportunity to establish their entitlement, warning against a process in which people could lose their voting rights merely because they failed to return an enumeration form or could not be contacted at their previous address.“Right to vote is a vital right,” said the bench, questioning whether a voter who had missed the enumeration process could forever lose the opportunity to be included in the rolls.

It added a person might move out of a constituency without necessarily being “shifted” in the sense contemplated by the Representation of the People Act. The court observed that the commission could verify information supplied through Form 8 and conduct an inquiry in cases where it had doubts. The poll panel, it said, could not simply presume that a person continued to reside at the address printed on an enumeration form when the person might have moved elsewhere.

It underscored that ECI had the responsibility to verify electoral entries and prevent duplication, but stressed that the procedure had to account for voters who were not reached during the exercise.ECI told the bench that th…