SPECIAL INTENSIVE REVIEW – VIOLATION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE
Arundhati Dhuru and Sandeep Pandey
When India gained independence, thanks to the extraordinary leaders of the freedom movement, Indian citizens gained universal suffrage as a fundamental right. During foreign rule, only the elite could vote. After independence, this was expanded to include the entire adult population.
Before a special, thorough review, the idea was to ensure that no one was deprived of the right to vote. Even if someone did not possess a voter ID card, they were allowed to vote using any other form of identification, provided their name was on the voter list. It was assumed that foreign citizens would not vote unless they had lived in the country long enough to acquire citizenship. Therefore, anyone who considered themselves a citizen of the country had the right to vote. This is the concept of universal suffrage.
Now, the concept of universal suffrage has been shattered by the advent of the Special Intensive Revision. This is not simply a revision, as its name suggests. It is the process of creating a new voter list. The stated purpose of the Special Intensive Revision is to remove the names of voters who are dead, have duplicate names, or have permanently moved.
However, in reality, the names of many categories of voters who would have been included in a simple revision are not being included in the list.
Consider the case of Uttar Pradesh, which has an adult population of 161 million. The State Election Commission conducted a revision process before the upcoming Panchayat elections, in which polling station-level officials conducted door-to-door surveys, and a total of 127 million voters were included in the voter list. This represents only rural voters. As part of the special in-depth revision process, the Election Commission of India issued enumeration forms to 15.4 million adult voters in the state, of which only 12.6 million voters completed and submitted the forms. This means that, according to the special in-depth revision, the total number of adult voters in the state is less than the rural adult voters! How can this discrepancy be explained? In addition to voters who are deceased, have double names, and have permanently migrated, there are several categories of voters who have not submitted enumeration forms to the polling station-level officials.
One category of voters is one who has filled out the online counting form, which is a very complicated process. The voter’s mobile number must be linked to their Aadhaar card and voter ID card, and the spelling of the name on the Aadhaar card and voter ID card must be consistent. Now, don’t ask why the Aadhaar card number is being requested, which is optional for voters filling out the form manually, as the online process will not be complete without it. After filling out their counting form, if a voter wishes to check the status of their form again on the Election Commission of India’s website, the counting form opens for re-filling. For voters who have filled out their forms manually and submitted them to polling-level officials and uploaded them to the website, a message appears stating that the counting form has been submitted. A complaint was sent to the Chief Election Commissioner on December 18, 2025, regarding the lack of a “Count Form Filled” message when accessing the website for the online form. This complaint received no response. It is beyond comprehension that if the objective of the Election Commission is to enable maximum number of valid voters to fill their counting forms then why has it made the online process so complicated?
One category of voters is one who possesses their Voter Photo Identification Cards, but when they enter their ID number on the Election Commission’s website, they receive a message stating, “No result.” These are voters whose names have been removed from the electoral rolls, either by mistake or intentionally. However, technically, their names should have been on the electoral rolls because they possess their voter ID cards. The serious question is why were they not given the counting forms? Since they haven’t received the counting forms, they obviously can’t fill them out. This means their names won’t be on the new voter list.
Then there’s the category of voters who don’t have a voter ID card, but their name, or that of their parents or grandparents, appears in the Special Intensive Revision of 2002-03. This means they meet the citizenship criteria set by the Election Commission, but simply because they didn’t receive the enumeration form, their name won’t appear on the revised list.
A major category of voters is those displaced by government development projects, such as those formerly living in Akbar Nagar in Lucknow. Their polling station-level officials are telling them that since their constituency has changed, they are considered permanently displaced. The names of those in this category being removed are those who have no address. However, in the case of Akbar Nagar, it is known that all the displaced people are living in Vasant Kunj. The legal requirement would have been to have all these voters complete their census forms, along with Form 8 for changing their address. This category of voters will also be barred from submitting their census forms because they were not provided with them. Their names will also be deleted from the new list.
All voters whose names will be deleted from the revised list are being asked to fill out Form 6 and get their names added to the list. Form 6 is for new voters to be included in the electoral roll. It requires a declaration that the aspiring voter’s name never appeared on any electoral roll before. This means the Election Commission is asking voters to fill out Form 6 based on a false declaration. This raises doubts about whether legitimate voters who are about to be deleted from the new electoral roll will be able to get their names added again. Large numbers of people from the most vulnerable sections of society—the poor, Dalits, tribals, women, and minorities—will be deleted from the electoral roll.
It’s clear that instead of going door-to-door, the process of enumeration forms, which were conducted during the Special Intensive Revision, deleted approximately 18 percent of voters from the voter list, including many legitimate voters. A fundamental question is why were voter lists for two different levels of elections conducted simultaneously for the same population using two different methods? The result is a discrepancy of approximately 30 million voters between the two voter lists! Could there be a more egregious example of bureaucratic incompetence, inefficiency, and the waste of public time and resources? We’re not even talking about the polling station officials who, victims of this entire tyranny, passed away. Isn’t this contrary to the principle of universal suffrage?
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