This writer must admit to a vested interest in this story, as the Election Commission office in New Delhi erased his wife from the national capital territory's electoral rolls, and restored it only after many months of a doughty fight by the family.

This was the national capital, a well-known senior citizen, albeit a Catholic, and it is a moot question whether it is an ingrained issue of the scanning software algorithm, itself a matter of concern, or human intervention, when it becomes a matter of a criminal complaint.

Not far from the offices of the Election Commission of India, the Registrar General of India, known in official records as the Census Commissioner, has announced that population enumeration for Census 2027 will begin early in four States expected to hold Assembly elections next year.

In Goa, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and the non-snowbound areas of Uttarakhand, the exercise will run from December 1, 2026 to January 4, 2027, with residents in all such states able to self-enumerate online between November 16 and 30, with a revision from January 5 to 9.

Their census reference date will be midnight on January 5, rather than March 1, which will apply to most of the country.

For many households, the census comes soon after the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, and though the two exercises have different legal purposes, their proximity should invite scrutiny of the procedures, documentation and administrative capacity involved.

Since the Election Commission of India began the SIR in Bihar in June 2025, more than 13 crore names have been omitted from draft electoral rolls across 30 States and Union Territories.

Delhi's draft roll contained approximately 47.7 lakh fewer names, nearly a third of its previous electorate. Maharashtra's fell by 2.06 crore, or 21.1 per cent, while Karnataka's excluded more than a crore names.

Though these are officially draft omissions rather than final deletions, and some names may be restored through claims and objections, the contraction is exceptional.

The revision has proceeded in stages, with its second phase in November last year covering nine States and three Union Territories; their combined draft electorate fell from 50.96 crore to 44.4 crore, a difference of 6.56 crore.

In Uttar Pradesh, the draft published in January retained 12.55 crore of the 15.44 crore electors on the earlier roll, leaving out 2.89 crore, or 18.7 per cent.

A third phase covering sixteen States and three Union Territories produced another large set of omissions, at a rate exceeding 17 per cent.

Article 326 provides for elections to Parliament and State legislatures based on adult suffrage, with citizens aged 18 or above entitled to be registered unless disqualified on recognised grounds such as non-residence, unsoundness of mind, crime or corrupt electoral practice.

As important, Article 325 requires a single general electoral roll for each constituency and prohibits exclusion on grounds of religion, race, caste or sex.

Under the SIR, electors have been asked to submit enumeration forms, connect themselves or their parents to rolls prepared in 2002 or 2003 and, in disputed cases, produce supporting records within a limited period.

Such requirements are easier for settled households with consistent documents than for migrant workers, poorer families and people whose names have been recorded differently by different public authorities.

As far back as 1995, the Supreme Court held that people already entered on an electoral roll could not be removed simply because their citizenship had been questioned, with an objection requiring a proper basis, the affected person receiving a notice and a reasonable opportunity to respond.

On May 27 this year, however, a Bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi upheld the present revision, holding that the Election Commission had the necessary authority under Article 324 of the Constitution and Section 21(3) of the Representation of the People Act, 1950.

The Court, to its credit, did recognise voting as a constitutional right subject to statutory regulation and distinguished a general inquiry into the accuracy of electoral rolls from an adjudicatory proceeding against a particular voter.

According to jurists, the judgment did not remove the risks created by delay or error. As seen in West Bengal and Assam in the recent state assembly elections, a voter whose eligibility remains under inquiry on polling day may forever lose the opportunity to participate, even if a tribunal later restores the name.

West Bengal shows how serious that timing problem can become - the draft roll published on December 16, 2025 omitted 58,20,898 names, reducing the listed electorate from 7,66,37,529 to 7,08,16,616. When the final roll appeared on February 28, 2026, about 60 lakh entries were reportedly still under adjudication, and a further 6 lakh had been marked as deleted.

The number immediately eligible to vote was reported as 6,44,52,609, down 1,15,57,397 from the pre-revision electorate.

The distribution of these exclusions attracted international attention, with even United Nations special rapporteurs Nicolas Levrat, Irene Khan and Nazila Ghanea asking the Indian government to respond to allegations that ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities had been disproportionately affected.

They cited Nandigram, where Muslims were reported to make up 95 per cent of deleted voters while constituting about a quarter of the constituency's electorate, and where valid identity documents were allegedly rejected because of differences in spelling or other minor inconsistencies.

Nineteen tribunals, each headed by a former High Court judge, were created to consider challenges arising from the revision. According to an RTI reply dated August 17, they had received approximately 38.10 lakh appeals by August 7 but had decided only about 82,000, or 2.17 per cent, with only 75,339 getting their names restored.

Millions of unresolved appeals represent citizens whose status remained uncertain, with many genuine voters losing an important opportunity to choose their representative.

An analysis by The Scroll found that the number of names omitted during the revision exceeded the Bharatiya Janata Party's victory margin in 105 constituencies it won in West Bengal; 86 were seats the party had not won before, and the exclusions were numerically significant in many closely contested seats.

Differences between States raised another set of questions, as in Assam, which underwent a Special Revision rather than a Special Intensive Revision because citizenship verification there was already proceeding under Supreme Court supervision.

Its final roll omitted 2,43,485 names from a draft electorate of more than 2.52 crore, a contraction of less than one per cent, demonstrating how strongly the selected procedure shaped the result and why the Commission should explain its choice in each State.

In Manipur, the picture is different: the Centre deferred census house-listing there after the High Court directed that the operation remain in abeyance until October 12 in a ruling following demands from some Meitei and Naga organisations for the National Register of Citizens to be updated before the census, a position opposed by Kuki-Zo representatives.

The Census population-enumeration schedule contains forty questions, including caste as declared by the respondent, Aadhaar and voter identity details, family relationships and migration information.

These data can improve demographic knowledge and public planning, but electors have recently faced questions about ancestry or inconsistent records, and the government has not clearly explained why it collects census information, how it protects it, or what it cannot be used for.

Reports of intense pressure on booth-level officers, mostly school teachers and staff, during earlier phases, including deaths by suicide — as many as 33 according to the SPECT Foundation - and medical emergencies, indicate the consequences of compressed timetables.

Universal adult franchise was introduced in a newly independent country marked by poverty, low literacy and limited documentation and preparing the first electoral rolls required officials to locate and register citizens rather than wait for them to present a standard set of papers.

India was a rare country that gave women the right to vote from the beginning, unlike major Western nations, and when large numbers of women were omitted because they were identified only as someone's wife or daughter, the government moved swiftly to correct the error.

Civil society leaders, jurists and political leaders have repeatedly emphasised that electoral rolls must be accurate, avoiding wrongful inclusion and wrongful exclusion alike, and that every removal should be specifically communicated, with the person given notice and time to respond before polling.

Parliamentary oversight has been negligible, if at all, and there is a rising demand that Parliament should also receive a clear assurance that confidential census returns will not be used to determine electoral eligibility or citizenship.

Clearly, the electoral roll and a census serve different constitutional functions: one defines the body of registered voters, and the other provides a statistical account of the population, with the understanding that the State has recorded it fairly, protected the information, and corrected mistakes promptly.

This overlap has led to allegations of a coordinated attempt to exclude voters, and to increasingly loud demands for greater transparency, realistic timetables, and safeguards strong enough to ensure that administrative revision does not deprive an eligible citizen of the opportunity to vote.