Civil society collective Voter Adhikar Manch issued a press statement demanding the immediate nationwide rollback of the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise and the immediate resignation of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar. Citing investigative reports published by The Indian Express on September 23, 2026, and The Reporters’ Collective, the organisation alleged that the SIR is an unconstitutional, arbitrary, and discriminatory scheme of disenfranchisement executed without proper legal sanction or full Commission approval.
Lack of Commission Approval and Internal Dissension
According to details cited from The Indian Express, the design of the SIR was never approved by the full Election Commission. Over a 10-month period, two of the three Election Commissioners, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, recorded official objections at least fourteen times regarding orders issued in the Commission’s name without their knowledge or consent.
- These unauthorised orders covered new voter registrations, deletions and restorations of voter names, appeals filed against restorations made by judicial officers, and custody of the electoral roll.
- Commissioner Sandhu explicitly categorised one such action as “unauthorised and illegal”.
- Alterations to Form 6 were maintained despite Commissioner Joshi recording that such changes required statutory rule amendments, a position Commissioner Sandhu concurred with.
Form No.6 - Centralisation of the electoral roll database was carried out, taking control away from the statutory officers designated by law.
- Despite Article 324 vesting election superintendence in a three-member body and Section 18 of the 2023 Act requiring business to be transacted unanimously as far as possible, the full Commission convened only once every four months, and the majority was never consulted on these orders.
Under these unauthorised directives, approximately 13 crore (130 million) voter names across 30 States and Union Territories have been struck off.
Mass Disenfranchisement in Delhi
In the National Capital Territory of Delhi, 47.6 lakh electors are absent from the draft roll, and 31.6 lakh more have been served notices, together affecting 54.6% of the total electorate. An investigation by The Reporters’ Collective published on September 21 revealed severe irregularities:
- Out of Delhi’s 14,947 polling booths, only 51 remained within the ECI’s own 2% deletion threshold above which an Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) must perform personal verification.
- At 639 polling booths, more than half of the registered electorate was removed.
- Across nine booths covering localities where government slum demolitions took place, 8,800 out of 10,015 voters were deleted.
- Deleted voters include families who were handed flats in Wazirpur by the Prime Minister in January 2025, who are now marked as “absent” or “untraceable”.
- Excluded voters forced to re-apply through Form 6 receive a fresh EPIC number, breaking the continuous electoral record necessary to support their legal claims for housing rehabilitation.
VIP Favouritism and Article 14 Violation
A second investigation published on September 24 by The Reporters’ Collective exposed preferential treatment given to prominent figures through a “Mark VIP” module enabled on the BLO application on July 30:
- Directives circulated via WhatsApp instructed officers to mark ministers, their families, celebrities, judges, and bureaucrats to prevent “inconvenience or embarrassment” to the Commission.
- A notice issued to the Chief Minister of Delhi was resolved within hours without a hearing, before hearings for her own booth had commenced.
- An Assistant Electoral Registration Officer (AERO) admitted to issuing zero notices to VIP voters in his constituency, instead deploying Booth Level Officers (BLOs) directly to VIP residences to collect documents.
- Daily wage workers are forced to lose daily earnings to queue and establish descent, while ministers receive door-to-door service.
Voter Adhikar Manch pointed out that the Representation of the People Act, 1950 creates no VIP class of citizens, rendering this practice a direct violation of Article 14 of the Constitution.
Key Demands
Reiterating demands first raised at a press conference on September 8, 2026, Voter Adhikar Manch outlined five urgent demands:
1. Withdraw SIR Immediately: Stop the Special Intensive Revision in Delhi and across India, restore all removed electors, and revert to voter rolls as they existed prior to the SIR.
2. Resignation or Impeachment of CEC: Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar must resign immediately as all objections were copied to him. If he fails to resign, Parliament must initiate impeachment proceedings.
3. Independent Inquiry: Constitute a high-level independent committee headed by a former Chief Justice of India and including a former Chief Election Commissioner to investigate unauthorised orders and fix individual accountability.
4. Repeal 2023 Act: Repeal the Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners Act, 2023, and establish an appointment mechanism free of executive control to restore visible independence as mandated by the Supreme Court.
5. Full Public Disclosure: Place all SIR documents in the public domain, including the 14 written objections, correspondence with the Cabinet Secretary, criteria for “logical discrepancies,” WhatsApp instructions, and VIP lists.
The press statement concluded by citing Article 326, emphasising that voting rights stem from citizenship alone and cannot be revoked by unauthorised software processes or administrative discretion.
When the right to vote itself comes under question, silence is not an option. The concerns raised over SIR, voter-list revisions and the demand for accountability from the Election Commission strike at the very foundation of democratic participation. Electoral reforms must protect every genuine voter, ensure transparency, and strengthen public trust—not weaken it. Democracy is meaningful only when every citizen can trust that their voice and their vote will be counted.