The Election Commission of India (ECI) has informed the Bombay High Court that the absence of a voter’s name from a draft electoral roll does not constitute a formal deletion. The clarification came during a hearing at the Goa bench, where the court reserved its verdict on a writ petition filed by a resident challenging the exclusion of his family members from the latest electoral lists.
Representing the ECI, Senior Advocate Ashutosh Kumbhakoni explained to the bench, comprising Justices Valmiki Menezes and Amit Jamsandekar, that a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) is fundamentally different from a Special Summary Revision (SSR). While a summary revision focuses on updating an existing electoral roll based on new information, an SIR is a comprehensive, "de novo" exercise. Under this process, the electoral roll is prepared afresh from the ground up through an intensive enumeration exercise, rather than merely amending current data.
"Absence from the draft SIR roll does not automatically amount to deletion," Advocate Kumbhakoni stated. He further argued that because the entire roll is being constructed anew, names that do not appear in the draft have not been deleted in the technical sense. According to the ECI, the petitioner in the current case had not resided at the address listed in the pre-SIR records for approximately eight to ten years. The commission argued that the petitioner failed to initiate the necessary procedures to update his residency status before the SIR process commenced, characterizing the situation as an example of the revision's intended effectiveness.
The petition was brought by Paresh Salgaonkar, a resident of the St Cruz constituency in North Goa, after six members of his family were excluded from the roll. Representing the petitioner, Advocate Vivek Rodrigues provided a detailed timeline of their efforts to maintain their registration. He noted that enumeration began on November 4, 2025, and claimed that a Booth Level Officer (BLO) visited both the old and new addresses of the family on November 8, 2025. When the petitioner requested the enumeration form on November 12, he was reportedly told that it could only be delivered to the address recorded in the existing electoral roll.
Advocate Rodrigues explained that the petitioner subsequently submitted Form 8 to request a change of address. While the ECI confirmed receipt of the application on December 8, 2025, the petitioner’s name remained missing when the draft roll was published on December 16. The BLO had initially informed the petitioner that the application was under process and had not been rejected. However, on January 17, 2026, the petitioner received correspondence indicating the application had been forwarded to the Electoral Registration Officer. The application was ultimately rejected on January 21, leaving the petitioner without registration status.
During the proceedings, the judges observed that their review was not intended to challenge the legitimacy of the SIR process itself. Instead, the focus remained on the procedural application of registration rules and the handling of the petitioner's specific case. With arguments from both sides concluded, the court has reserved its final judgment on the matter. The case highlights the ongoing complexities surrounding electoral roll revisions and the procedural hurdles voters may face when attempting to navigate address changes during large-scale administrative updates.
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