The Bengal Congress committee and the state secretary of the CPM’s Tamil Nadu unit on Monday filed separate petitions in the Supreme Court challenging the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls across the country.
A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi agreed to take up the petitions on Tuesday, along with the original petitions filed by the Association for Democratic Rights (ADR) and the DMK challenging the Election Commission’s decision.
The AIADMK, however, has filed a plea in support of the pan-India exercise on the ground that a large number of fake/duplicate voters were enrolled in Tamil Nadu.
In his petition, the CPM's P. Shanmugam clarified that he was not opposed to the SIR but to the short time in which it was being conducted.
“The SIR exercise vide the said notification has fixed a time limit of just one month (November 4 to December 4, 2025) within which enumeration must be completed for 6.18 crore voters in the state of Tamil Nadu. The Election Commission of India has fixed a target of around 500 houses per day per BLO (booth-level officer) to issue enumeration forms, fill the form and verify the documents of the voters. It is humanly impossible for a BLO to visit 500 houses per day, and the reality is that a BLO can only visit 40-50 houses per day to complete the exercise meaningfully. Hence, the SIR exercise is manifestly arbitrary,” the petition submitted.
The DMK has also moved the apex court to quash the EC’s October 27 notification on conducting SIR in 12 states and Union Territories, arguing that it would disenfranchise lakhs of voters and affect the citizenship rights of several others.
The DMK has challenged the constitutional validity of the SIR on the ground that it violated Articles 14 (equality), 19 (freedom of speech), 21 (life and personal liberty), 325 (electoral rights of voters) and 326 (dealing with Lok Sabha/state Assemblies) of the Constitution as well as provisions of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, and the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960.
