Validating flaws: on the Supreme Court and the SIR
The article critically analyzes the Supreme Court's recent verdict upholding the Election Commission of India's (ECI) 'Systematic Identification of Registrants' (SIR) exercise for electoral roll revision. While the Court validated SIR as an advancement towards free and fair elections, the author argues that it retrospectively approved a process that led to significant deletions and a fall in gender ratio in electoral rolls, particularly impacting minorities and the underprivileged. The Court's reasoning engaged with SIR in theory, overlooking its flawed implementation and the petitioners' contentions regarding the scope of Section 21(3) of the Representation of the People Act and the inversion of the presumption of validity for existing electors. The judgment distinguished between 'adjudicatory' and 'inquisitorial' exercises, confining a prior judgment (Lal Babu Hussein, 1995) that insisted on reasoned, individuated removals.
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