Dark day for judiciary: Lawyers, Opposition react to SC’s order upholding SIR

New Delhi: An uproar followed the Supreme Court’s approval of the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise, with advocate Prashant Bhushan terming it a “dark day for the judiciary” and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) accusing Congress leader Rahul Gandhi of opposing the cleaning up of electoral rolls and siding with “illegal infiltrators.”

The Supreme Court on Wednesday, May 27, upheld the power of the ECI to conduct the SIR, saying the exercise “advances the constitutional imperative of free and fair elections.”

In a post on X, BJP national spokesperson Pradeep Bhandari said, “Rahul Gandhi and Congress party stands exposed! The Supreme Court declares SIR process legal and constitutional!”

“It is clear that Rahul Gandhi and Congress opposed (the SIR) all through because they stood with illegal infiltrators, not with Indian voters,” Bhandari alleged.

The BJP spokesman also termed the opposition to the exercise an “anti-national act” and asked whether Gandhi would apologise “for defaming Indian democracy”.

Telangana BJP president N Ramchander Rao defended the SIR exercise, stating it had no “political overtones” and was introduced as a routine exercise. “This is perhaps the 10th or 11th time that SIR is being carried out in the country. Because the Congress and INDI Alliance parties are losing elections, they are now trying to blame the SIR process for their defeats,” he said.

The state’s BJP spokesperson NV Subhash also commended the apex court’s ruling, appealing to people to participate in the SIR process.

Opposition voices concerns

Prashant Bhushan, a key advocate representing the petitioners in the case, said the Supreme Court’s judgment was “very, very dangerous,” adding that the court has virtually given the ECI a blank cheque to conduct the exercise as it pleases.

“This judgement has come many months after the elections in Bihar, West Bengal, and Tamil Nadu had already been held… I think its a very dangerous sign for our democracy because the Election Commission has become totally partisan and it is a dark day for the judiciary and in particular for the SC,” he said.

Telangana MLC Professor M Kodandaram made strong allegations, claiming the exercise has resulted in “disenfranchisement of citizens, more particularly citizens belonging to the weaker sections.”

“As a result of this disenfranchisement, they are losing their voting rights. Voting right is one weapon that they possess in order to secure certain concessions from the government. If they lose it, then they are citizen-less, and then they are unable to bargain with the government,” he said.

Critics and opposition parties repeatedly alleged that SIR had resulted in voter disenfranchisement, as the minority communities, including Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe, Backward Classes and Muslims, were targeted or deliberately removed using Form 7, which seeks the deletion of voters.

Muslims accounted for 95.5 per cent of voters deleted from seven SIR supplementary lists in West Bengal’s Nandigram. Former Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee claimed that names of people belonging to the Matua community were deleted from post-SIR voter lists in the state, adding to the speculation.

Congress MP Pramod Tiwari said the issue was not whether the ECI could conduct the exercise, as it had already done so in the past. “But the process used to be different, spanning four years, unlike the current situation where, under Gyanesh Kumar, the SIR is conducted with general elections looming,” he said.