–Shubham Yadav, Senior Research Fellow at Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (India)
India’s tryst with destiny and democracy at the founding moment was not just a euphoric entry into postcolonial modernity, but also a complex of promises that could hold the aspirational nation and its constituents together. The list of such constitutional promises was enormous since on the eve of independence, the Indian experience was constitutive of a bloody partition, experimental constitution-making, multifarious territorial sovereignties, and a public unsure about its future. One of the central promises was that of popular sovereignty, claimed in 1949 through the symbolic “We, the People” reference in the constitutional preamble and to be manifested duly in the form of universal adult franchise, among other modes of popular expression. Ornit Shani explores and expresses how the creation of the first electoral list was not just a bureaucratic exercise but a pedagogical-constitutional exercise deemed to launch India as a democracy by enlisting its entire adult population as voters and showing that it was ready for self-governance, as opposed to the British view that “Indians are not fit to rule”. Thus, as Shani shows, the exercise of constructing electoral lists was envisioned as an on-ground manifestation of the ideals and principles discussed and debated in the Constituent Assembly. The people, while dealing with the officials, were to usher in a democratic setup and would constitute the colony into a self-governing democracy. Such was the nature of the founding enfranchising exercise of India.
This history and politics of electoral rolls have come full circle with a widespread disenfranchisement exercise, which the Election Commission refers to as the Special Intensive Revision, or SIR. While deemed to be a “large-scale verification exercise” to resolve the issues that “yearly revisions can no longer fix”, in reality, SIR is an apparatus to structurally modify and alter the voting demography, leading to large-scale disenfranchisement. Looking at the exercise from its impacts on the constitutional order, this article argues how the primary victims of SIR are not the impoverished citizens whose rights have been stripped off but the constitutional order, which was built and legitimised through certain foundational promises. Backtracking on these foundational promises, does more harm to the ‘deals’ that were made at the founding moment to functionalise the post-colonial constitution which the political regime has been frequently ignoring and dismantling.
The frivolity and detriment of this exercise were highlighted by two petitions that reached the Supreme Court on Friday, April 24th 2026. In the first petition, the Electoral Officers who were to conduct the polling exercise were themselves left disenfranchised by the SIR, and in the second petition, the person disenfranchised by the SIR found himself to be the only one outside the electoral roll while his family, including the siblings and the cousins, landed in the lists. The Supreme Court referred both matters to the Appellate Tribunal, constituted for fast-track resolution of issues related to exclusions; however, this Tribunal had been virtually defunct and inefficacious due to a huge load of cases and a resolution rate of 0.001% (136 out of 14 lakh). While disposing off the petition, one of the judges also observed, “this election yes [sic] perhaps they can’t vote”, ridiculing the right and intent to vote in an election that constituted the foundation of Indian constitutional promises.
However, the brunt of this exercise will not only be borne by the people disenfranchised but also by the larger democratic framework that rested on the belief and faith of people in popular democracy. The exercise thus breaks another constitutional promise that was central to the formation of the nation at the founding moment. The founding moment and the consequent exercise of nation-formation can be understood through a construction analogy, where various constitutional promises, like asymmetric federalism, equal citizenship, universal adult suffrage, fundamental rights, religious autonomy, etc., can be located as the foundation of the building, on which the nation was to be built. The strength of the nation was then dependent on the respective strength and inter-relationship of these pillars, which would determine the peace, prosperity and harmony of the forthcoming constitutional democracy. These rights were therefore not just recognitions recorded into the constitution, but deals signed between the ‘people’ and the framers at the founding moment to coalesce into a united and integrated India.
However, the experience of the independent or postcolonial public met with a compromised fate, which is reaching its height through recent developments. The core tenets of these foundational promises, i.e. asymmetric federalism and equal citizenship had already faced a blow with abrogation of Article 370 and passage of the Citizenship Amendment Act in 2019. Abrogation of Article 370, which recognised the special status of Kashmir owing to its history, geo-political location and founding deal made with the ruler of the state, led to a major constitutional crisis dealt by the regime by invoking ‘national security and integration’. Furthermore, the principle of equal citizenship was ignored and destroyed by passage of the Citizenship Amendment Act in the same year which barred Muslims from obtaining citizenship while non-Muslims were accorded the right. Publicised as a move to provide refuge to persecuted minorities from the neighbouring states, the act outcasted Muslims assuming a communal bias that Muslims can’t be persecuted in ‘Muslim dominated states’. However, read along with the plan to construct a nationwide ‘National Register for Citizens’, the combined effect of two was held to be detrimental to Muslims who could be ousted out of the state’s citizenship on as frivolous grounds as speculation by neighbours. Not only constitutional derailments but also governance failures such as continuous increment in rates of indirect taxes, massive mismanagement of the COVID pandemic, increase in wealth disparity, suppression of fundamental rights, etc., through which the state has been continuously backtracking on its foundational promises.
As such, the SIR exercise is not just a disenfranchisement exercise that boots voters out of the electoral process but a broken promise that was fundamental to the formation of the nation at the founding moment. It is not just one election that the citizens won’t be able to vote in, but a huge dent in the constitutional agreement that binds people in a system based on the aspirations of a constitution like ours. When one foundational pillar faces a blow, it is never singularly affected; the entire edifice of the constitutional structure bears the brunt of the blow. Simultaneous blows hurt the structure in ways unimaginable.
Shani shows how Indians became voters before becoming citizens, and with the contentious passage of exclusionary citizenship law and now this large scale disenfranchisement exercise, it becomes clearly visible that the apparatus to strip away citizenship was constructed first (through CAA-NRC), succeeded by a mechanism to render voting rights defunct, all in due observation of the Supreme Court of India. While the general sympathies are directed towards the citizens who are stripped of their voting rights, the true brunt is, however, borne by the foundation on which the constitutional aspiration of a “Sovereign Democratic Republic” of India rests. These constitutional promises were never just benevolent gifts of the Constitution to its constituents, but a recognition of the agreements that the Constitution entered at the founding moment. Breaking these agreements is not just impoverishing citizens but also weakening India’s tryst with a transformational constitutional setup.
Suggested citation: Shubham Yadav, Who Bears the True Brunt of a Disenfranchisement Exercise? Int’l J. Const. L. Blog, May 22, 2026, at: http://www.iconnectblog.com/who-bears-the-true-brunt-of-a-disenfranchisement-exercise/