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First time that so many eligible electors have lost their vote due to SIR: former CEC O.P.

When Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi found that their objections were not heard, especially regarding the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, they should not have stopped at dissent notes, said former Chief Election Commissioner O.P. Rawat. Instead, the two ECs should have ensured that all decisions taken against their will were annulled at the very next meeting of the three-member Commission, he said. The third member of the Election Commission of India (ECI) is Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.

Slamming the way the SIR has been carried

Slamming the way the SIR has been carried out, Mr. Rawat noted, in an exclusive interview with The Hindu on Wednesday (September 30, 2026), that this is the first time since Independence that so many eligible electors had lost their voting rights.

Dr. Sandhu and Dr. Joshi had formally objected

Dr. Sandhu and Dr. Joshi had formally objected to various aspects of the SIR, 14 times over a ten-month period. Their objections covered several ECI decisions, including changes to Form 6, and the ECINet portal’s added declaration asking new voters whether they or their parents or grandparents had appeared in the last SIR’s electoral roll.

“They had the majority [in the ECI]. In

“They had the majority [in the ECI]. In the very next meeting, when their first objections were not heard, they should have annulled all the decisions taken against which they had an opinion. They should have taken the right decision, which would have prevailed. So obviously, they did not take that route,” the former CEC said.

Mr. Rawat helmed the poll body between January

Mr. Rawat helmed the poll body between January 23, 2018 and December 1, 2018. He had been an Election Commissioner from 2015.

Describing the ECI’s functioning, the former CEC said

Describing the ECI’s functioning, the former CEC said that Commission meetings were usually held very regularly. Every week, a day was fixed for it, and additional meetings were also held. “All kinds of permutations and combinations were used to ensure that decisions were quick, efficient, and nothing suffered because of pending decisions,” he said.

Asked how Commissioners arrive at a consensus, Mr

Asked how Commissioners arrive at a consensus, Mr. Rawat said that when the members are not on the same page, meetings help them understand each other’s point of view and bring about an agreement. In the “one in a million” occasions where consensus cannot be reached, he said, there is the recourse of voting, where the majority opinion prevails.

“The Chief Election Commissioner himself does not have

“The Chief Election Commissioner himself does not have any veto. Absolutely not. He is equivalent to the other Commissioners,” he said.

On the SIR process in West Bengal, he

On the SIR process in West Bengal, he said the damage had already been done before the Assembly election. “93% of the deleted voters whose appeals have been decided by the tribunals were found eligible, and they missed exercising their voting right in the elections. That is something very serious for a democracy,” he pointed out.

Mr Rawat said that the Supreme Court had

Mr Rawat said that the Supreme Court had upheld the Election Commission’s right to hold any kind of special revision of rolls in its judgement on the Bihar SIR.

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First time that so many eligible electors have lost their vote due to SIR: former CEC O.P. Rawat

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Source: The Hindu

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