[This is Part 2 of a two-part series which was originally published as a single article in The Wire on October 9, 2026. Part 1 was published in last week’s issue.]

RTI intervention with the ECI

Attaching the relevant extracts from the Supreme Court’s judgement, the following queries were posed to the ECI:

“1) The total number of cases referred by the Election Commission of India (ECI) to the competent authority under the Citizenship Act, 1955 till date, for the purpose of adjudication of citizenship of persons whose names have been deleted on account of the Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls in the State of Bihar, pursuant to the aforementioned directions of the court,

2) The state-wise number of cases referred by the ECI to the competent authority under the Citizenship Act, 1955 till date, for the purpose of adjudication of citizenship of persons whose names have been deleted on account of the Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls in Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal,

3) The Union Territory-wise number of cases referred by the ECI to the competent authority under the Citizenship Act, 1955 till date, for the purpose of adjudication of citizenship of persons whose names have been deleted on account of the Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls in Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep and Puducherry,

4) Please provide the gender-wise number of all such cases from every State and Union Territory specified above, referred by the ECI to the respective competent authorities under the Citizenship Act, 1955 till date, for the purpose of adjudication of citizenship, and

5) A legible copy of every communication addressed by the ECI to the Union Government, till date, on the subject matter of adjudication of citizenship of persons whose names have been deleted from the electoral rolls in the States and Union Territories specified above.”

After 50 days (against the statutory deadline of 30 days), its Central Public Information Officer (CPIO) replied (see Image 3 below) saying that it did not have any of the information sought in the RTI application.

The CPIO also said that the information described in the first four queries, pertaining to numerical data of cases referred to the competent authority for adjudication from Bihar and the other 12 states and Union Territories where the SIR exercise had been completed might be available with the respective CEOs. He refused to transfer the RTI application to them, without explaining, why. 

The CPIO’s reply clearly indicates that the ECI has not even bothered to collect the information about persons found ineligible to be enrolled as voters to comply with the Apex Court’s express and time-bound directions.

RTI intervention with the MHA

The RTI intervention with the MHA, also made in August, attaching extracts from the Supreme Court’s judgement, contained the following queries:

“1) The name and designation of the competent authority appointed under the Citizenship Act, 1955 for the purpose of adjudication of the citizenship of persons whose names have been deleted on account of the Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls in the State of Bihar, pursuant to the aforementioned directions of the Hon. court,

2) The total number of cases from the State of Bihar referred by the Election Commission of India (ECI) to the said competent authority till date, for the purpose of adjudication of citizenship, pursuant to the aforementioned directions of the court,

3) The name and designation of the competent authorities appointed under the Citizenship Act, 1955 for the purpose of adjudication of the citizenship of persons whose names have been deleted on account of the Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls in the States of Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, and the Union Territories (UTs) of Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep and Puducherry, pursuant to the aforementioned directions of the court,

4) The total number of cases from each of the States and UTs specified immediately above, referred by the ECI to the respective competent authorities till date, for the purpose of adjudication of citizenship, under the Citizenship Act, 1955, pursuant to the aforementioned directions of the court,

5) Please provide the gender-wise number of all such cases referred to the respective competent authorities by the ECI in respect of every State and UT specified at paragraph nos. (2) and (4) above, and

6) A legible copy of every communication received from the ECI till date, on the subject matter of adjudication of the citizenship of persons whose names have been deleted from the electoral rolls of the States and Union Territories specified above.”

MHA transferred the RTI application to the legislative department of the Union law ministry on the same day it was filed. Two days later, the legislative department sent the RTI application to the ECI physically (because the ECI has its own RTI online facility and is not onboarded to the Union government’s RTI portal) washing its hands off the matter (see Image 5). In the reply, the CPIO had added the surname “Singh” to this author’s name indicating a copy-paste job from some other RTI reply, done poorly. 

The ECI replied to the RTI received from the legislative department, after 40 days (see Images 6 & 7 below). This time, another CPIO of the ECI transferred to the MHA, the queries pertaining to the competent authorities.

Queries regarding the total number of cases from Bihar and the other 12 States and the UTs that the ECI ought to have referred to the MHA were all transferred to the CEO, Bihar. Strangely, query 6 in which copies of the ECI’s own communication sent to the MHA were sought, was also transferred to the MHA.

Not only the ministries and departments but also a constitutional authority like the ECI have tied themselves up in knots answering these queries. What will the MHA and the CEO, Bihar do with the RTI queries transferred by the ECI remains to be seen.  

The manner in which the ECI and the Union government departments have dealt with these RTIs raises several fundamental questions.

First, why has the ECI not yet referred to the MHA, cases of ineligible persons struck off the voter lists in States and Union Territories where the SIR has been completed? The time limit for compliance was four weeks but more than four months have passed since the Apex Court’s directions were issued.

Second, can the ECI even identify such cases with any degree of certainty at all? Many of us make the mistake of treating the 13 crore names reportedly deleted from the voter lists across the country, as the number of individuals who might have been disenfranchised.

Common sense dictates this is too simplistic an inference because a large number of duplicates and deceased voters would have been eliminated in the course of the SIR causing hardly any harm to anybody. Amidst such a large number of deletions, is it possible to identify with any degree of certainty, the cases of provisionally non-citizens who belong to the ‘ineligible’ category?

Third, did the ECI have any baseline data about this category of individuals before it made their purging from the electoral rolls as a primary objective of the SIR?

Fourth, if it did not have any such data did the ECI allow itself to become a tool for implementing the political agenda encapsulated by the 3-D strategy of ‘detect delete and deport’ repeatedly tom-tomed by the leading lights of the NDA including Union Home Minister Amit Shah, both inside and outside Parliament?

Fifth, before issuing the direction for referral of cases, did the Supreme Court ask the MHA, who would be the authority competent to adjudicate the citizenship status of persons identified by the ECI as ‘ineligible’ to be on the voter lists? Jurists and legal experts tell us that the orders and directions of courts must be implementable if they are to have any effect on circumstances in which the litigation was initiated. Unimplementable directions remain mere verbiage, denting the majesty of the court which issues them.

Sixth, if the MHA had not identified such competent authorities prior to the issuance of the court’s directions, what are the reasons for the delay, that it does not have an answer to the specific RTI query even after four months? Is this why the ECI has not yet begun the process of collecting such cases from Bihar and other states and Union Territories? Will the apex court ask these tough questions in the days to come? We hope, the Youth movement and the opposition parties are taking note of these matters amidst their daily protests.

Venkatesh Nayak is Director, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, New Delhi.