The Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, which began in June 2025, has led to over 13 crore names being deleted from the draft rolls in 30 states and Union Territories. Delhi and Maharashtra’s draft rolls showed a drop of 32.8% and 21.1%, respectively. According to data released by the Chief Electoral Officers of both places, the total number of electors fell from 1.45 crore pre-SIR to 97.53 lakh in the draft roll, and 9.78 crore to 7.71 crore, respectively.In Karnataka, 19.54% votes were deleted and in Bengaluru, where I live, almost 50% have been flagged as Absent, Shifted, Dead, Duplicate or Other (ASDDO). Out of 1.03 crore voters, 49.42 lakh have been flagged, including me – I stand disenfranchised, although I am alive and well.Such a massive disenfranchisement/deletion of voters is due to the totally incompetent, arbitrary, autocratic and unprofessional manner in which the whole project was carried out throughout the country. The project was purely bureaucratic with untrained and poorly motivated junior part-time government officials called “Booth Level Officers” working under duress and delivering incomplete and dishonest results.The oversight by Assistant Electoral Registration Officers and District Election Officers has been, at best, a sham. Loaded with their original work these officials pay only casual attention to the electoral rolls. The Election Commission itself was imperial and unresponsive and at its behest the Chief Electoral Officers behave like petty warlords. There are no checks and balances in the rolls finalised by these worthies.Also read: SIR in Delhi: As One-Third of the Voters Left Out, Field Notes from a Haywire ProcessAll these factors combined have virtually destroyed the constitutional right of Universal Adult Franchise embedded in Article 326, which says:“The elections to the House of the People and to the Legislative Assembly of every State shall be on the basis of adult suffrage; that is to say, every person who is a citizen of India and who is not less than eighteen years of age on such date as may be fixed in that behalf by or under any law made by the appropriate Legislature and is not otherwise disqualified under this Constitution or any law made by the appropriate Legislature on the ground of non-residence, unsoundness of mind, crime or corrupt or illegal practice, shall be entitled to be registered as a voter at any such election.”The Election Commission has, so far, not proved that the deleted/disenfranchised voters fall under any of these categories of disqualification – underage, non-citizens or otherwise disqualified by law.The mindless validation and endorsement of SIR by the Supreme Court makes no difference. Neither the Election Commission nor the Supreme Court have the powers to deny registration as a voter to any citizen outside these disqualifications. Doing so would be a gross violation of the constitution and those responsible for it would face criminal liability, as the former chief election commissioner S.Y. Quraishi has said.A remedy for SIR deletionsWhat is the remedy? ‘We, the People’ cannot accept and live with 15% of the electorate disenfranchised on the whims and fancies of a couple of people seated on high chairs at the Election Commission and the Supreme Court. That would be the death of India’s democracy. The only way is to subject the electoral rolls prepared under SIR – finalised and draft rolls – to open public audit. The Election Commission’s own ‘Manual on Electoral Rolls’ (2023) provides for this:Para 11.2.4(vi) and Para 24.1.2 of the ECI’s Manual, lays down as below:“(vi) Reading out draft roll in Gram Sabha/Ward Committee: Electoral Registration Officer shall also get the draft roll of each part read out loudly by Booth Level Officer concerned in the meeting of the Gram Sabha/Ward Committee in his assigned polling station area. This is to ensure that any omissions or commissions are brought out and remedial action is initiated.”Para 24.1.2 specifically mentions the reading out of the draft roll in the Gram Sabha and Ward Committees: “The Election Commission has further directed that Electoral Registration Officers shall cause Booth Level Officers to read out the draft roll of each part in the meetings of the Gram Sabha/ Ward Committees in their assigned polling station areas.”These provisions were deliberately suppressed by the Election Commission because of its bad-faith intention and the lordships in the Supreme Court did not even bother to look at it! At the end of the day, elections and democracy are for “We, the People” and not abstract and static institutions. So, the ultimate weapon is the public audit of electoral rolls before they are used for election purposes.The framework for a public auditDisclosure and wide dissemination: For each booth, publish and display the extract of the existing (base) roll on notice boards, public hospitals, schools, polling stations, and on the CEO website for download. This disclosure must be made at least 15 days prior to the scheduled public hearing (Jan Sunwai) at the Gram Sabha or Ward Committee.Door-to-door enumeration: BLOs must carry blank Form 6 during house-to-house enumeration and must assist the voter in filling the form. BLOs should not collect documents at this stage.Notify claims and objections: Forty-eight hours before the Jan Sunwai, BLOs must display booth-wise draft lists of claims and objections received during door-to-door enumeration.Public hearing (Jansunwai): At these hearings, the BLO must read out the following details pertaining to voters.Names in the proposed revised voter listNames of deleted voters with reasonsNames of new voters with reasonsDetails of claims and objections received and decisions thereon.Mandatory presence of the ERO or their delegate, members of the Panchayat or Ward Committee and revenue officials, including the custodians of records such as birth registers, land records, property taxes, etc., must be present to answer queries and produce records.5. Open dialogue: Any resident may testify in support of or against any entry, with both party agents and civil-society observers permitted in the proceedings. The entire proceeding must be video-recorded.6. Minutes and speaking orders: Within 48 hours of the public hearing, the BLO shall: Publish booth-wise minutes and the particulars of all objections and claims received. The BLO shall also pass speaking orders on each claim or objection raised during the process within seven days of the public hearing.Searchable rolls, made publicAdditionally, the electoral rolls must be made accessible in searchable digital format on the ECI website and through a mobile application for universal public access. It shall provide a simple booth-wise view, always reflecting the latest revised roll. It shall also provide an alphabetically arranged view of all voters under revision, also updated in real time.Also read: Three Phases of SIR: How EC Has Applied Varying Rules for the Nationwide Voter Roll RevisionThe roll should similarly allow sorting by date of birth, age, relative’s name and relationship. These views shall always reflect the latest revised roll. All the above should be accessible to every Indian from any part of the world.The public audit at Mongolpuri, DelhiAn attempt at such public audit by civil society and citizen groups in Delhi’s Mangolpuri Y-Block found a significant gap between the 2025 electoral roll and the draft SIR roll. According to the audit, of approximately 9,600 registered voters in the area, around 5,800 appeared in the draft SIR roll, while roughly 2,800 were placed in the ASDD category – Absent, Shifted, Dead or Duplicate – and approximately 1,800 could not be located either in the draft roll or the ASDD list despite appearing in the 2025 voter list.Screengrab from a people’s audit of the Special Intensive Revision conduted by Jan Sarokar, Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan, National Federation of Indian Women, Voter Adhikar Manch and other civil society organisations on September 9, 2026, Mangol Puri, Delhi. Credit: Facebook/@mazdoorkisaanThe audit, conducted over more than three weeks under the banner of Jan Sarokar, Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) and Voter Adhikar Manch, involved house-to-house verification across eight polling booths and covered nearly 10,000 voters using the 2025 Delhi Assembly electoral roll as the baseline. The findings were presented at a public hearing, or Jan Sunwai, held in Mangolpuri on September 5, 2026.The hearing came amid a massive reduction in Delhi’s draft electoral roll. The Chief Electoral Officer’s figures show that Delhi had 14,510,299 (1.4 crore) electors when the SIR process began, while the draft roll published on August 31 contained 9,753,577 (97.5 lakh) names. That leaves 4,756,722 (47 lakh) electors outside the draft roll, or roughly 32.8% of the electorate. The picture is almost the same throughout the country, with minor variations.The Mangolpuri public audit results can be taken as the reflection through out the county. This is in accordance with the famous saying in Tamil, “Oru paanai sotrukku oru soru padam.” (to see whether a pot of rice is cooked you check just one grain of rice.)The colossal fraud called SIR has brought about a peculiar situation wherein either elections conducted prior to SIR in 2024 and 2025, including the parliamentary election, becomes illegal because electoral rolls were bogus and highly bloated or elections conducted after the SIR in 2025 and 2026 become illegal because they were done after large-scale deletion/disenfranchisement of voters. The Supreme Court has to answer this at some point of time.It is difficult to contemplate such a situation persisting in a democracy. So, the only way out is to put the entire electoral roll prepared under SIR up for public audit and verification to make them genuine so that we really can have democratic elections. Indeed, it is a colossal task but has to be done. Without such a public audit of SIR, elections in India would be a humongous scam.The writer is author of the book Emergency and Neo-Emergency: Who will Defend Democracy, 2025, The Browser.