NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Wednesday urged the Election Commission of India (ECI) to consider extending the deadline for Delhi’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and accepting enumeration forms filed after the cut-off date, as a hearing on the contentious revision exercise threw up fresh questions about the process. The bench, led by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, heard arguments on the ongoing revision on 28 October, with the fate of lakhs of Delhi voters hanging in the balance.
At the heart of the hearing was the approaching 30 October deadline for the SIR exercise in the national capital. The court asked the poll body to consider giving voters more time, a suggestion that will be watched closely by political parties and civil society groups concerned about the pace and design of the revision. To be clear: the bench urged the Commission to consider an extension. It did not itself order the deadline to be extended, and any change to the schedule remains a decision for the ECI.
The scale of the exercise is enormous. The draft roll, published on 31 August 2026, was drawn from an electorate of about 1.45 crore voters. Of these, about 47 lakh did not fill enumeration forms, a figure that has fuelled much of the anxiety around the revision. The ECI told the court that about 43 lakh had permanently shifted from their registered addresses, while about 2 lakh were deceased.
Much of Wednesday’s argument centred on Form 6, the form for first-time voters seeking inclusion in the electoral roll. Advocate Prashant Bhushan argued that asking existing voters to file Form 6 created a serious problem, because the form carries a declaration that the applicant has never voted before. For a voter already on the roll, signing such a declaration would be false, leaving genuine electors trapped between exclusion and a false statement.
The bench appeared to find force in that argument, describing the situation as a “structural incongruity”. The judges also noted Delhi’s distinctive character as a city with a large and mobile population, where people frequently move homes and live at addresses that may not match older records. That mobility, the bench suggested, makes a rigid approach to verification particularly risky in the capital.
Another striking figure was that about 33 lakh voters have received notices on account of “no mapping” with the 2002 electoral roll or logical discrepancies in their records. The ECI sought to reassure the court that receiving a notice does not mean deletion. Booth level officers will visit homes to verify details, the Commission said, and online hearings will be held in exceptional cases where physical verification is not possible.
The Commission also set out the road ahead. Under the revised schedule already in place, claims and objections run to 30 October, disposal of those claims is to be completed by 30 November, and the final roll is scheduled for 4 December. The ECI has been asked to file a report within two weeks, and the court will then consider the next steps.
The hearing matters well beyond the technicalities of forms and deadlines. Electoral roll revisions determine who gets to vote, and in a city the size of Delhi, even a small percentage of wrongful exclusions translates into lakhs of citizens. The court’s intervention, even as an urging rather than a direction, signals that it expects the Commission to err on the side of inclusion. Whether the ECI extends the deadline, and how it resolves the Form 6 conundrum, will now be the key questions as the 4 December final roll approaches.
