New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday (November 11) took charge of the legal battle over the Election Commission’s nationwide special intensive revision of electoral rolls, issuing a notice to the poll body and halting all related cases in the country’s high courts.

A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi heard lawyers for political parties and Association for Democratic Rights (ADR) argue that the process was impractical, rushed and unconstitutional. The top court will hear the case on November 26 and has ordered the ECI to respond.

The hearing saw sharp exchanges over the voter revision’s timing, the ECI’s authority and the right to vote itself.

'A farcical exercise': Petitioners challenge timing and legality

Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, representing the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), called the ECI's uniform timeline unworkable for states like Tamil Nadu.

“November-December is the time of heavy rains... officers will be occupied with flood relief,” Sibal said. “December has Christmas vacations... January is the harvest – Pongal season. This period is the most unsuitable.”

He described the one-month revision as a "farcical exercise," contrasting it with past revisions that took years. "What was the great hurry?" he asked, warning that the rushed process and poor rural internet would disenfranchise the poor.

Advocate Prashant Bhushan, for the ADR, raised a deeper constitutional alarm. He argued that the revision, by demanding citizenship-like documents, effectively turns the ECI into a "de facto National Register of Citizens (NRC)."

"Do not let the EC determine citizenship," Bhushan urged, stating that power belongs only to the Union Government. He suggested alternatives for finding duplicate voters, such as using existing software and conducting verifications through village councils (gram sabhas).

Judicial scrutiny and data privacy

The bench questioned the petitioners' arguments. Justice Kant expressed skepticism at their alarm. “You people are acting as if the electoral roll revision is happening for the first time! We are also aware of the ground realities,” he remarked. "A constitutional authority is doing this... Point out [deficiencies], they will rectify."

Justice Joymalya Bagchi focused on Bhushan’s plea to make electoral rolls machine-readable for public verification. Citing a 2018 case, Justice Bagchi raised voter privacy concerns.

“The EC holds the data in public trust,” he noted, suggesting mass data could be misused. He countered Bhushan with an analogy: “You lock your house. Thieves break open the lock. Is it a reason for you to not lock your house ever again?” He suggested the ECI could instead build more security or offer password-protected access.

ECI and AIADMK defend revision

ECI counsel Rakesh Dwivedi asked the court to halt the high court cases to avoid conflicting orders, a request the court granted. He took a swipe at opposing state governments, quipping that they were "competing to highlight how backward they are" and unable to "bear the rigours of SIR."

The AIADMK, Tamil Nadu’s main opposition, intervened to support the ECI. Its counsel, Balaji Srinivasan, called the revision "legitimate and necessary" and expressed surprise at the ruling DMK’s claim of poor connectivity in a state it governs.

The legal challenge began after the revision was first tried in Bihar, where it faced allegations of large-scale, arbitrary voter deletions. The DMK argues that expanding this flawed model nationwide violates the constitutional rights to equality, freedom of expression, and universal suffrage.

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