How its 2003 guidelines nail the Election Commission's lies

And now the foundational lie of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls has been caught.

The truth was buried in a document the Election Commission of India (ECI) had been hiding for three months — the final guidelines issued for the intensive revision of Bihar’s voter list back in 2003.

Here’s how it unfolded.

Ever since it announced, on 24 June 2025, the SIR exercise for Bihar, the ECI has, like a metronome, repeated: ‘We’re only doing what we did in 2003. What’s new? Why object?’

But it never made the 2003 file public.

It wasn’t even attached to the 789 page affidavit it filed in the Supreme Court.

When the Court asked, “Alright then, show us what was done in 2003,” the Commission fell silent. When transparency activist Anjali Bhardwaj sought a copy under the RTI Act, the Commission didn’t respond. When journalists asked, ECI ‘sources’ claimed the file had gone missing.

Clearly, something was being hidden. But no one had the evidence to prove it — until now.

Last week, Supreme Court advocate Prashant Bhushan placed the missing document before the Court. Dated 1 June 2002, the 62-page document is now, finally, in the public domain.

And it is clear why the ECI buried it: What’s written in it flatly contradicts the ECI’s three main claims about the SIR.

The ECI's ‘three big lies’ about 2003 Bihar voter roll revision

The ECI’s first lie was that in 2003, every voter filled an enumeration form, that the entire process was wrapped up in just 21 days, and that this year’s SIR, too, was conducted on the same lines as 2003.

But the 2003 guidelines tell a different story: No voter was asked to fill any enumeration form.

Back then, instead of booth-level officers (BLOs), enumerators were appointed as the Commission’s local representatives. Their task was to go door-to-door, make corrections in the old rolls, rewrite the revised entries, and get the head of the household to sign them.

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For the regular voter, there was no form nor a submission deadline, and certainly no threat of being struck off the voter rolls for failing to comply.

Nothing in 2003 resembled what has been done under the SIR this time.

The second lie was that the 2003 process had a stricter set of eligible documents — only four were accepted, while this year’s SIR allowed eleven.

But the old guidelines show that in 2003, regular voters did not have to submit any documents.

Papers were asked for in exceptional cases: from families newly arrived from another state applying for enrolment for the first time, or from individuals suspected of misstating their age or place of residence. There was no universal verification of documents, however.

By contrast, SIR 2025 required everyone to produce some document — either proof of their name on the 2003 rolls or one of 11 documents. Later, the Supreme Court added Aadhaar as the twelfth.

The third and biggest lie was that there was a verification of citizenship in 2003 — and because everyone on the 2003 rolls had already been vetted, only the rest, i.e., those whose names did not appear on the 2003 rolls, would have to produce citizenship papers this time round.

The 2003 guidelines demolish this claim too, stating explicitly that enumerators were not responsible for checking citizenship.

Proof of citizenship could be sought in only two situations: (1) if the state government had officially declared an area to be ‘dominated by foreigners’ and a new applicant had no family member already on the rolls; and (2) if there was a written objection that someone was not an Indian citizen — with the burden of proof on the objector.

Beyond these two scenarios, no one’s citizenship was examined, and no name could be struck off the rolls on that basis.

The 2003 guidelines even specify that due weightage be given to names already on the rolls.

Back then, it was the government’s job to identify foreigners, not the Election Commission’s; this time, the ECI has assumed charge of verifying citizenship.

Bihar’s experience has blown the cover off the ECI story.

The question now is: what new excuses will the ECI invent to defend an SIR in other states?

Views are personal. More of Yogendra Yadav’s writing can be read here

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