New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday (December 9) pulled up  the Election Commission of India (ECI) for providing "mechanical and cyclostyled" responses to genuine voter grievances, raising serious questions about the procedural integrity of the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.

Chief Justice of India Surya Kant voiced the court’s exasperation at the ECI's tendency to use abstract statistics to parry the practical difficulties faced by citizens. The rebuke from the top court has brought into focus a growing body of evidence – from independent investigations in Bihar to the ECI’s own admissions – suggesting that the push for statistical targets has come at the cost of accuracy, the safety of ground staff, and the correctness of the voter list itself.

‘Cyclostyled’ answers

The court was hearing applications seeking an extension of the deadline for submitting enumeration forms in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Applicants argued that migrant workers in hilly regions and students studying outside their home states were unable to meet the December 11 cutoff. In Tamil Nadu, the situation is compounded by the annual Sabarimala pilgrimage, with many voters expected to return only by mid-January.

When presented with these issues, the ECI’s response was strictly numerical, stating that "99.27% of enumeration forms were received and digitised in Tamil Nadu".

CJI Kant dismissed the statistical defence. “For you, it is 90% and 97% every time a practical difficulty is raised in this court. Your answers are always mechanical and cyclostyled,” he observed. While Senior Advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, representing the ECI, claimed the poll body had its "fingers on the pulse" and termed the complaints "speculative", the court posted the matter to December 18 to assess the situation further.

A question of speed

The court’s skepticism regarding the ECI’s data mirrors findings from the earlier revision exercise in Bihar, where high-velocity data collection often masked procedural breakdowns. An analysis by The Wire of the Bihar process revealed that after a slow start, form collection surged to implausible levels. On July 7, the ECI claimed to have collected 1.18 crore forms in a single 24-hour period – a rate of roughly 8,200 forms per minute, or 137 forms every second.

This statistical sprint was achieved by dismantling the ECI's own procedural safeguards. Investigations in districts like West Champaran found that Booth Level Officers (BLOs) had abandoned mandatory door-to-door visits in favour of central collection points. Furthermore, despite rules requiring every voter to receive a duplicate form as a receipt, surveys indicated that only 6% of voters received one, leaving millions without proof of submission. Officials admitted that in the rush to upload data, forms were often processed without verification of attached documents, effectively turning the registry into a bulk data dump.

‘Sheer leg work’

The pressure to generate these numbers has placed an immense burden on the BLOs. During Tuesday’s hearing, Justice Joymalya Bagchi questioned whether the ECI was acting as "too much of a driving force", noting that the task was not merely "desk work" but "sheer leg work". Justice Bagchi highlighted that officers must travel house to house, verify details, and upload forms under significant duress.

The ECI, however, sought to deflect this charge. Dwivedi contended that the stress was not caused by the Commission, but by "hostile" ruling political parties in states like West Bengal and Kerala who were "bossing around" the officials. He specifically cited pressure from the CPI(M) in Kerala as a disrupting factor.

Despite this defence, the human cost on the ground appears severe and widespread. Data from BLO associations and submissions by the Trinamool Congress indicate that approximately 73 BLOs have died during the SIR exercise as of December 10, including officials like Aneesh George from Kerala who collapsed while on duty. Tensions have spilled over into street protests; in West Bengal, a section of BLOs recently held a massive demonstration outside the Chief Electoral Officer’s office in Kolkata alleging excessive workload, prompting police deployment.

The mounting toll has drawn attention to the ECI’s internal messaging. The commission recently faced criticism for its ‘SIR Joyathan’ campaign, which released a video of election officials dancing to music. The promotional material was labelled "tone-deaf" by critics against the backdrop of reported exhaustion and fatalities among the workforce.

The puzzle

Perhaps most damaging to the ECI’s narrative is evidence suggesting that the chaotic process has failed to achieve its primary objective: the "purification" of electoral rolls. While the ECI claimed the Bihar rolls were "100% clean" following the revision, an analysis by The Reporters' Collective, cited by petitioners, found that approximately 14.35 lakh suspect duplicates remained in the final list.

The anomalies included roughly 3.42 lakh "carbon copy" entries matching perfectly in name and age, as well as 1.32 crore voters registered at addresses that appeared fictitious or housed implausible numbers of people.

The root of this failure was acknowledged by the ECI in a significant admission to the Supreme Court on December 8. The ECI stated it had stopped using its own automated de-duplication software because it was found to be "ineffective". This confirms that the massive task of identifying duplicates was left entirely to manual verification by the already overstretched BLOs, a revelation that may explain the persistence of errors in the final rolls.

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