The Election Commission on Tuesday (January 6, 2026) told the Supreme Court that it has the power and capacity to conduct Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter lists. The Election Commission said that apart from this, it is its constitutional duty to ensure that no foreigner is registered as a voter.
Senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi presented these arguments on behalf of the Election Commission before the bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi. The bench resumed final hearing on petitions challenging the Election Commission’s decision to conduct SIR in several states, including Bihar, raising important constitutional questions on the scope of powers of the election body, citizenship and voting rights.
Rakesh Dwivedi underlined that all major constitutional officers in all three organs of the state should be Indian citizens. He cited provisions like Article 124(3) of the Constitution related to the appointment of judges of the Supreme Court and High Court.
He said that one of the major conditions for the appointment of top constitutional officials like the President, Vice President and Prime Minister is that the person must be an Indian citizen. Rakesh Dwivedi said, ‘All important appointments… no appointment can be made unless the person is a citizen, hence our Constitution is primarily citizen-centric.’
Addressing concerns that the SIR could be a parallel citizenship-determination exercise to the National Register of Citizens (NRC), he emphasized that the electoral roll and the NRC serve fundamentally different purposes. He said, ‘All persons have been included in the NRC, whereas only citizens above 18 years of age have been included in the voter list.’
Rakesh Dwivedi also said that under Article 326, only citizens can vote and citizenship should be obtained only through a competent authority. Pointing out that the Election Commission is not taking political decisions but is discharging its constitutional responsibility, he said whether there are ten or thousands of foreign nationals in the voter list, they have to be excluded. Rakesh Dwivedi will resume his arguments on Thursday (January 8).
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