NEW DELHI — The Supreme Court on Monday firmly rejected claims that it had endorsed alterations to statutory Form 6—the application used to register first-time voters—during the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. Clarifying the bench’s stance during proceedings on a petition seeking to restrain Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar, a bench presided over by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant remarked that the court had sanctioned no such modifications and signaled it would scrutinize internal records to determine who authorized the changes.
The judicial clarification arose after senior advocate Menaka Guruswamy, appearing on behalf of petitioner Shailendra Mani Tripathi, contested unilateral procedural adjustments made to voter registration templates. The petition challenges 14 contentious decisions purportedly executed by the CEC without the formal concurrence of the full commission. The issue gathered heat after the Election Commission publicly asserted last week that a supplementary declaration annexed to the online Form 6 for the SIR exercise had received judicial approval from the top court.
The modified Form 6 introduced an obligatory declaration requiring fresh applicants to disclose whether they or their parents had been mapped during prior intensive revision cycles, attaching penal liability of up to one year of imprisonment or fines under Section 31 of the Representation of the People Act for false statements. The insertion had reportedly triggered formal objections from fellow Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, who cautioned that statutory registration forms cannot be modified without formal amendments to the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 enacted by the Central Government. Opposition parties and civil society advocates echoed these concerns, alleging that the extra compliance layer placed an unfair burden on prospective young electors whose parents were absent from historical rolls.
While the Supreme Court had earlier, on May 27, upheld the constitutional legitimacy of conducting the Special Intensive Revision under Article 324 and the Representation of the People Act, 1950 to ensure credible and accurate voter rolls, the court emphasized that it had never evaluated the contested Form 6 declaration, which was introduced well after that verdict in July. Although the poll panel subsequently withdrew the extra declaration requirement for non-SIR states last month, the apex court reiterated that official files will be examined to trace how the revision was originally implemented.
