The great Indian trust bust: Why GoI shouldn't simply defend SIR numbers, but demand explanations

NEW YORK: Public trust in the electoral process may be the biggest casualty of controversial implementation and flaws of SIR, and CEC's reported conduct within the commission. On Monday, there were further misgivings when Calcutta High Court pulled up EC over its handling of a party poll symbol dispute between two factions of Trinamool Congress, and went on to suggest 'connivance' between the poll panel and one of the disputing parties. The next day, Supreme Court agreed to take up a petition questioning CEC Gyanesh Kumar's functioning and seeking to declare SIR illegal.

Recent surveys point to a decline in public confidence in the fairness and legitimacy of elections. For BJP, erosion of trust in the electoral process and, by extension, in GoI, may ultimately pose a greater risk than the Opposition's resistance to SIR.

Over the past year, the share of Indians who believe that elections are 'free and fair' has fallen from 64.4% to 51.9%, while the share who believe they are not, has risen from 31.7% to 40.9%. These figures come from different rounds of the India Today-CVoter Mood of the Nation survey and may, therefore, not be strictly comparable. Nevertheless, they point to a deterioration in perceptions of electoral fairness.


The most recent survey was conducted between July 1 and August 25, before much of the controversy surrounding EC's functioning and CEC's reported dismissal of dissent from the two other EC members came to light this month. If those developments have further affected public perceptions, the current level of confidence in the electoral process may be even lower.

Note that public perception of the need for SIR remains positive. 60% of people surveyed believe that SIR is necessary to remove bogus voters, 20% consider it necessary but think that it's carried out with a bias, and only 11% believe it's designed to remove specific groups, as per the India Today-CVoter survey.

Yet, one factor that threatens to undermine confidence in SIR is the sheer scale of draft exclusions. More than 13.3 cr names, 14-15% of pre-SIR electorates, were absent from draft electoral rolls released after SIR across 30 states and UTs. These are not final deletions. Claims, objections and hearings will restore some voters to the rolls. Still, the scale of draft exclusions raises legitimate questions, particularly because many states had conducted special summary revisions (SSRs) of their electoral rolls only recently.

Consider Maharashtra. The state conducted SSR in 2024. Yet, in the 2026 SIR draft, 21% of pre-SIR electorate - more than 2 cr names - was not carried forward. Delhi completed SSR in late-2024 prior to the 2025 assembly elections. Yet, the 2026 SIR draft didn't include about 33% of the pre-SIR electorate - roughly 48 lakh voters.

Of those excluded from the draft, about 3% were classified as duplicates and 6% as deceased. The remaining 91% fall into the broader category of 'permanently shifted, absent or other'. When almost one-third of the existing electorate disappears from a draft roll, the question is not merely how many names will eventually be restored. It's why such a large discrepancy arose in the first place.

GoI shouldn't simply defend these numbers. It should be asking questions and demanding explanations. How many of these exclusions resulted from errors in the SIR process? How many involve people who voted in recent elections? Why were these names retained in earlier SSRs? How many are genuine cases of permanent migration, and how many are people who remain eligible voters? And, most importantly, how can the process be redesigned so that genuine voters are not required to overcome unnecessary administrative hurdles to exercise their constitutional right to vote?

At the all-India level, deletions associated with out-migration should, at least in principle, be accompanied by additions associated with in-migration. If they are not, an important question arises: is SIR systematically losing track of India's highly mobile migrant population?

When the current SIR began, there was widespread concern that it could disproportionately disenfranchise minorities, particularly Muslims. In West Bengal, TMC and other opposition parties initially made strong claims about the political consequences of SIR, although some subsequently acknowledged that SIR-related exclusions alone might not determine the electoral outcome. But the larger question remains: are religious minorities being disproportionately excluded from the electoral rolls? This is a very serious issue, and the onus of providing evidence against such assertions, and not dismissing them as merely 'conspiracy theory', falls primarily on EC.

Over decades, EC has conducted several intensive revisions of electoral rolls, most recently on a large scale in 2002-03. Those exercises were not free of errors or controversy. But the current SIR has generated an unusually intense debate over the integrity of the electoral process. What is different this time? Is it scale of the exercise, documentary requirements, treatment of migrants, communication of rules, or manner in which EC has handled criticism?

These questions matter beyond current electoral rolls. The chaos and confusion surrounding SIR, together with the fear of large-scale exclusion and disenfranchisement, could undermine public confidence not only in elections but also in other major exercises of state enumeration. The census, already delayed by several years, will require citizens to cooperate with the state on an even larger scale. If citizens come to believe that providing information to the state can jeopardise their rights rather than secure them, consequences could extend well beyond SIR.