“We, the People of India…” These opening words of the Constitution embody the founding principle of the Indian Republic. It underlines that sovereignty belongs to the people and that citizenship is not a privilege but the constitutional basis of membership in the Republic, carrying with it equal rights, equal dignity, and an equal say in the democratic process.

It is in this connection that the Supreme Court’s clarification on the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) is significant. The Court made clear that SIR is not a process for determining citizenship and that deletion of a person’s name from the electoral roll does not by itself deprive that person of citizenship.  This observation made on July 17, 2026, comes at a time when attempts are being made to create linkages between electoral verification and citizenship and connected entitlements, generating legitimate apprehensions among large sections of the people. Its earlier stamp of approval to the SIR exercise notwithstanding. 

TWO VISIONS OF INDIA

The SIR exercise cannot be understood divorced from the deeper ideological contest over the idea of India. Independent India emerged from conflicting conceptions of nationhood. One found expression in the Constitution, which conceived India as a Republic based on the sovereignty of its people. Every citizen, irrespective of faith, caste, or social origin, was to enjoy equal political rights.

The other concept propounded in M.S. Golwalkar’s We, or Our Nationhood Defined conceived India primarily as a Hindu nation where national identity was derived less from constitutional citizenship and more from cultural belonging. This distinction is fundamental. It is core to deciphering the multifarious exercises surrounding citizenship that the Modi government has undertaken in the last few years.

Ambedkar a sharp critic of competing communal conceptions of the nation, observed:

“Strange as it may appear, Mr. Savarkar and Mr. Jinnah, instead of being opposed to each other on the one nation versus two nations issue, are in complete agreement about it. Both agree, not only agree but also insist that there are two nations in India — one the Muslim nation and the other the Hindu nation. They differ only as regards the terms and conditions on which the two nations must live.”

UNIVERSAL FRANCHISE: THE DEMOCRATIC FOUNDATION

While Article 325 declares that no person could be ineligible for inclusion in an electoral roll on grounds only of religion, race, caste, or sex, Article 326 guarantees universal suffrage. The right to vote is therefore one of the principal means through which citizens exercise their sovereignty. 

How this exercise gets translated at the ground level finds it clearest expression in what Rita, a sex worker from Delhi’s G.B. Road says. In a report in The Hindu of August 9, 2026, on the issues faced by sex workers in the SIR process, she is quoted as saying that the vote made her “feel equal in some sense.” Notwithstanding the stigma, economic deprivation and social exclusion that she confronts, the fact that her vote carries the same value as that of the filthily rich and the privileged, is an experience of sovereign and equal citizenship that the Constitution guarantees. 

The electoral roll is the instrument through which that right is made effective. This makes the integrity of electoral revision extremely important. While the electoral rolls must be accurate and regularly updated, it is also equally important that the process of revision ensures that genuine citizens are not arbitrarily excluded.

LIMITS OF SUPREME COURT’S CLARIFICATION

Though the Supreme Court made it clear that the Election Commission can revise electoral rolls but cannot determine citizenship, an adverse conclusion during electoral verification can have consequences that extend well beyond the electoral process. A person whose eligibility is questioned or disputed may face prolonged administrative scrutiny, legal proceedings, and uncertainty. 

Khaleda Khatun’s experience exemplifies this trauma. A practicing doctor, writing in The Indian Express of April 23, 2026, Khatun described how she felt on discovering that her name had been placed “under adjudication". She submitted documents of her educational qualifications, family’s pre-Independence land deeds, and linkages to her grandparents and great-grandfather, expecting rectification. Yet, she was declared an “invalid and illegal voter”.  The distinction between “electoral verification” and “citizenship inquiry" became thin when the passport of a former editor of a prominent English daily was renewed only after it became an embarrassment for the government.

KAGAZ NAHI DHIKAYENGE

Over the past decade, apart from SIR, the country has been subjected to a series of exercises centered on citizenship, documentation and identity. These include the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam, the enactment of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), repeated proposals for a nationwide NRC, and sustained narratives against so-called “illegal infiltrators.” A High Level Committee to examine demographic changes has also been set in motion recently.

While each of these measures has a distinct character, taken together, they have contributed to creating an atmosphere in which citizenship is increasingly associated with documentation, verification and official scrutiny. They define citizenship and belonging in majoritarian terms. The Indian Republic is gradually being recast as a Hindu State in which minorities exist conditionally and under suspicion. It is not without reason that “Kagaz nahi dikhayenge” became a powerful expression of resistance during the anti-CAA/NRC protests.

THE OTHERING

SIR has in no small measure contributed to the othering of minorities who are repeatedly sought to be portrayed as objects of suspicion. Muslims, particularly in border regions, view the exercise against the background of the NRC and CAA debates. Their concerns arise in an atmosphere where shrill cries of throwing out the “ghuspatiya” are normalized and questions of belonging and citizenship have acquired a different meaning.

Writing in The Telegraph on May 8, 2026, Yamini Aiyar makes a distinction between the experiences of a Hindu and a Muslim woman. Yamini recounted the experience of a Hindu woman in the slums of Titagarh whose daughters' names had been struck off the rolls. She says the woman was scrambling to assemble documents to “prove” their existence. Her exasperation was telling: “A person will die just furnishing proof of their existence through documents; in death, we will have to furnish documents too.” 

Aiyar noted a contrasting response among Muslims she met. Anger was a luxury they could not afford; there was instead a quiet desperation to find their way back onto the lists and to be recognised as legitimate citizens by the State.

That is what Sahida Fakir’s family tried in vain. According to a report in the Indian Express of August 10, 2026, this 40-year-old Bengali woman was picked up from a market in Navi Mumbai. Despite her family producing her birth certificate, school leaving certificate, her parents’ land deed and all other IDs available, it did not seem to be enough. Within three days of her being picked up she was pushed into Bangladesh from across the Assam border.

THE BURDEN OF PROOF

Unlike Sahida, not everyone possesses the documents demanded. Poverty, migration, displacement, change of residence, marriage, natural disasters, etc., all affect a person's ability to produce documentary evidence. From the ration card, which used to be the all-purpose document earlier, we have arrived at a stage where even the passport is categorised as a humble ‘travel document.'  It goes without saying that the burden of repeated documentation is more upon those least equipped to navigate bureaucratic procedures — poor households, migrant workers, women, dalits, adivasis, religious minorities, elderly persons, and the disabled.

ASSAM FOREIGNERS TRIBUNAL

In another significant judgment on July 13, 2026, the Supreme Court, finding serious procedural lapses, set aside a number of decisions taken by the Foreigners Tribunal in Assam. It was emphatic that proceedings involving citizenship cannot be mechanical, arbitrary, or one-sided. Proceedings that can determine whether a person is treated as a citizen must therefore conform to constitutional guarantees of fairness, reasoned decision-making, and due process.

The experience of Assam provides an important warning. The NRC was presented as an administrative exercise to identify citizens. In practice, it became one of the largest documentary verification exercises undertaken in independent India, leading to the exclusion of more than 19 lakh people from the final register.

RIGHT TO APPEAL – A CHIMERA

The crores who have been removed from the electoral rolls till now have been told that they possess a statutory right of appeal. But experiences emerging from West Bengal raise questions about their effectiveness. The Appellate Tribunals established to hear challenges to exclusion are already facing an enormous backlog of several lakhs. As per estimates, it would take decades for these cases to be disposed of.

Besides, who all have the capacity to exercise this right is a big question? How many days of work will a daily wage earner be ready to sacrifice? Will the migrant worker, the elderly adivasi, the disabled dependent on assistance, and the poor household struggling to assemble documents be able to approach the appellate process from the same position as a well-resourced person?

POLITICAL CONTEXT

This denial of a democratic right cannot be separated from the political context in which SIR is being imposed. It is this political context more than the exercise itself that has generated genuine anxiety among Muslims and other marginalised communities who continue to be portrayed by the BJP-RSS as objects of suspicion.

The communal dimension cannot be understood simply by examining the legal provisions governing SIR. It has to be located within the political environment in which those provisions are being implemented. Administrative powers that may appear neutral otherwise can produce profoundly unequal consequences when exercised in conditions of communal polarisation and unequal access to legal remedies.

It needs reiteration that the repeated emphasis on documentation, political campaigns questioning the belonging of particular communities, and attempts to redefine citizenship through increasingly intrusive administrative processes are part of a broader political project to reshape the character of the Indian Republic on majoritarian lines.

Ambedkar’s warning has proved to be prophetic. In the Constituent Assembly on November 4, 1948, he said:

“While everybody recognizes the necessity of the diffusion of constitutional morality for the peaceful working of a democratic constitution, there are two things interconnected with it that are not, unfortunately, generally recognized. One is that the form of administration has a close connection with the form of the Constitution. The form of the administration must be appropriate to and in the same sense as the form of the Constitution. The other is that it is perfectly possible to pervert the Constitution without changing its form by merely changing the form of the administration and to make it inconsistent and opposed to the spirit of the Constitution.” 

That’s exactly what is happening. The form of administration is being changed, the Constitution is sought to be subverted and citizenship undermined. This is happening even without a Nuremberg like law.