The Supreme Court has reminded the Election Commission that the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls cannot be treated as a backdoor route to determine who is or isn't a citizen — a clarification that came in response to a petition alleging West Bengal was doing exactly that.
The petition, filed by Congress leader Prasenjit Bose, pointed to a troubling pattern in the state. According to the plea, once a person's name was removed from the electoral rolls during the SIR exercise, West Bengal authorities began treating that deletion as grounds to cut off other entitlements entirely unrelated to voting. A notification dated May 19 reportedly barred anyone purged from the rolls from continuing to receive support under the Annapurna scheme, which provides cash transfers to women. A separate order on June 4 allegedly directed the removal of such individuals from the Public Distribution System, affecting their access to subsidised food grains. Earlier still, on May 14, the state had reportedly ordered a review and possible cancellation of caste certificates belonging to people whose names had been struck off the rolls.
Hearing the matter, a Bench led by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant — with Justice Joymalya Bagchi on the panel — pointed back to the Court's own May 27 ruling in the Bihar SIR case, where it had already held that SIR outcomes serve one purpose only: maintaining the electoral roll. They cannot be repurposed to settle citizenship questions.
Justice Bagchi went further, explaining that if a person's citizenship is genuinely in doubt, it is the Election Commission's job to refer that question to the appropriate government authority for adjudication under the Citizenship Act. Only once that formal process concludes can any change in status follow. Until then, he noted, the person's existing status — including access to welfare schemes — must continue undisturbed. The Election Commission, he added, has no constitutional mandate over citizenship matters under Articles 9 to 12.
The Court has now issued notice to the Election Commission, the West Bengal government, and the state's Chief Electoral Officer, setting the stage for a fuller hearing on how far a routine roll-revision exercise can be allowed to ripple into a person's access to food security, women's welfare support, and caste-based entitlements.