On 27 October 2025, the Election Commission of India launched what it called a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls across nine states and three Union Territories. By early January, provisional lists revealed an astonishing outcome: nearly 6.5 crore citizens had been removed from the electorate. This is not routine correction. It is a constitutional rupture presented as administrative maintenance. https://thewire.in/rights/when-the-electorate-itself-is-edited-the-constitutional-crisis-of-mass-disenfranch
The question before the republic is no longer administrative but existential: if the state can erase 65 million citizens from electoral rolls without census data, without parliamentary debate, without transparent criteria, and without meaningful due process, does universal adult franchise exist as a right – or merely as constitutional ornament?
Anand Teltumbde
12/01/2026