By Shashank Shekhar and Divya Sridhar
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee appeared personally before a Supreme Court bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant to challenge the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls ahead of the 2026 state assembly polls — a confrontation that raises immediate electoral questions and broader constitutional stakes about how far courts should go in policing election administration.
The SIR is a legally recognised exercise under Section 21(3) of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, intended to update rolls, remove duplicates, correct errors and register newly eligible voters. The Election Commission launched Phase II of the nationwide SIR in October 2025, covering roughly 510 million electors across 321 districts.
In West Bengal the revision quickly became contested. State authorities and civil-society groups alleged hurried verification, confusing notices, onerous documentation demands and the large-scale deployment of micro-observers from BJP-ruled states. Reports linked the exercise to hospitalisations, suicidality and at least some fatalities amid anxiety over deletions from the voters list.
The final voters list published on February 28, 2026, removed about 6.3 million names, and another roughly 6 million electors were issued notices under a new “logical discrepancy” category — many for minor spelling differences caused by transliterating Bengali names into English. The Election Commission insists the SIR is neutral, lawful and necessary, pointing to incidents of violence, intimidation and obstruction of its officials and to allegedly compromised 2025 rolls that contained absent, deceased or relocated voters.
Legally, the dispute sits at the intersection of the Commission’s broad, constitutionally granted powers under Article 324(1) and the courts’ duty to enforce rights. The Commission’s actions remain open to judicial review where they are arbitrary, unreasonable or violate fundamental rights. The Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Indira Gandhi v. Raj Narain (1975) affirmed free and fair elections as part of the Constitution’s basic structure, underscoring that judicial intervention can be necessary when electoral processes imperil equality, due process or the right to vote under Article 326.
Banerjee’s personal appearance as a petitioner — rather than through an advocate-on-record or the usual administrative channels — has prompted institutional questions. Bar Council rules expect holders of full-time government office to suspend active legal practice; convention ordinarily has state governments litigate through officials such as the chief secretary. Symbolism matters because perceived proximity between political actors and the judiciary can affect public confidence in institutional neutrality.
At the same time, statutory limits exist: the Representation of the People Act, 1951, bars courts from staying elections once formal processes commence, and courts have long shown restraint the closer an administrative action is to polling. The SIR, which predates formal election notification and the Model Code of Conduct, sits in a gray area. The Supreme Court’s early directions in the litigation — including protections for those in the logical discrepancy category and a warning against notices for trivial spelling errors — illustrate a calibrated approach that seeks to protect voters without seizing electoral management.
The contest also reveals federal strains: elections are implemented through state machinery, and deployment, AI-assisted verification and transparency choices can deepen centre-state mistrust. Where credible evidence suggests systematic exclusion of eligible voters, scrutiny is warranted; independence under Article 324 should not become insulation from accountability.
Courts can strike a balance by focusing on fair process rather than substituting administrative judgment, granting proportionate and narrow pre-election relief only for demonstrable systemic illegality, insisting on speedy adjudication to prevent prolonged distortion of the electoral field, and respecting institutional boundaries so judicial review safeguards voting rights without running electoral administration. Constitutional maturity lies not in expanding any single authority’s power but in exercising existing powers with restraint so that elections are both free in fact and seen to be fair.
Shashank Shekhar is Assistant Professor of Law at Lloyd Law College, Greater Noida. Divya Sridhar is Assistant Professor at Jindal Global Law School, O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat.
Original Source: https://nenews.in/politics/indian-courts-must-be-mindful-of-judicial-limits-in-electoral-matters/45266/
Category: Politics,Election Commission,Supreme Court
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Publish Date: 2026-03-19 14:59:00
