Democracy & Governance · October 2026
Is India’s Election Commission Losing Its Credibility? The Story Behind Form 6, the SIR, and Some Very Serious Questions
The Election Commission of India (ECI) is constitutionally tasked with protecting every citizen’s right to vote. But a series of decisions over the past year has shaken that trust.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) has never had a great time in the public eye. Like most independent institutions, it has drawn criticism from political parties and civil society at various points. But what is happening now is different in scale and seriousness. The criticism is no longer coming only from outsiders. It is coming from within the institution itself, with serving and former Election Commissioners raising concerns about specific decisions, specific forms, and specific procedures that they believe are problematic.
At the centre of this controversy are two things: a form called Form 6, and a massive exercise called the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.
What are Form 6 and the SIR?
Key Terms Explained
Forms, Rolls, and the Revision Exercise
Electoral Roll (ER) is the official list of all voters in a constituency. If your name is not on this list, you cannot vote. The ECI is responsible for maintaining and updating this list.
Form 6 is the form you fill when you want to register as a voter for the first time, or when you move from one constituency to another. It is governed by the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960. It asks for basic details: identity, date of birth, address, citizenship, and place of birth.
Form 7 is used to file objections against someone’s inclusion in the electoral roll. In other words, you use Form 7 to ask the ECI to remove someone’s name from the voter list.
Special Intensive Revision (SIR) is a large-scale exercise announced by the ECI in June 2025. It was described as a cleanup of the electoral rolls, covering nearly one billion voters across India. The stated goal was to remove ineligible voters and add eligible ones who had been left out.
Form 8 is used by existing voters to make corrections to their registration details, such as changing their address within the same constituency.
So far, so routine. Electoral rolls need to be updated. Forms need to be filled. This is normal administrative work for any election body. The controversy is not about the forms but about what the ECI added to them.
The Declaration that went beyond the Law
On June 24, 2025, the ECI issued a notification announcing the SIR. Buried inside Annexure D of this notification was something called a “Declaration Form.” This form was to be filled along with Form 6 or Form 8.
What did this Declaration require? It classified applicants by their dates of birth and then asked them to submit documents to establish their eligibility to vote, in line with the provisions of the Citizenship Act.
Here is the problem. The Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, are very clear about what Form 6 requires. The form asks for your identity, date of birth, address, and a declaration that you are a citizen and have not registered in any other constituency. That is all that is legally required to establish your eligibility as a voter.
The Declaration Form added new requirements that go well beyond what the Rules prescribe. It effectively asked applicants to prove their citizenship using documents in a way that aligned with the Citizenship Act rather than just the Representation of the People Act, 1950, which governs voter registration.
Why Is This a Problem?
The Difference Between Voting Eligibility and Citizenship Verification
To vote in India, you need to be an Indian citizen aged 18 or above, ordinarily resident in the constituency. The Representation of the People Act sets out how this is verified, and the Registration of Electors Rules say what documents you need to submit. The process is deliberately simple, because voting is a fundamental right under Article 326 of the Constitution.
The Citizenship Act, on the other hand, governs who is a citizen and how citizenship is established. It is a more complex legal framework, involving different documents, different authorities, and different standards.
When the ECI’s Declaration Form aligned voter registration with Citizenship Act provisions, it effectively introduced a new, stricter standard for proving citizenship as a condition of voting. Critics argue this goes beyond what the law allows the ECI to do, and could exclude valid voters who cannot produce the specific documents being asked for.
The concern was serious enough that some serving Election Commissioners (ECs) described the changes to Form 6 as “illegal and unauthorised.” The Chief Justice of India later observed that “no modified Form 6 has been approved by us,” referring to the Supreme Court.
In a letter dated October 1, 2026, the ECI itself told all Chief Electoral Officers that existing voters whose names have been deleted can apply for re-enrolment at any point in time. This suggests an acknowledgement that deletions may have been improper.
Many observers have asked a direct question: does the Declaration Form amount to an attempt to introduce a National Register of Citizens (NRC) through the back door? The ECI has not directly addressed this concern.
What Is the NRC?
Why This Comparison Has Caused Alarm
The National Register of Citizens (NRC) is a government database that lists verified citizens. An NRC exercise was conducted in Assam in 2019, where people had to prove their citizenship through specific documents. Around 19 lakh people in Assam were left out of the NRC, raising fears of statelessness for long-settled communities.
Critics of the ECI’s Declaration Form argue that by asking voters to prove citizenship through documents linked to the Citizenship Act, the ECI is effectively running a citizenship verification exercise using the electoral roll as its vehicle.
This would be deeply problematic because it means ordinary voters, many of whom may not have the required documents, could lose their voting rights without any formal NRC process having been announced or debated by Parliament.
The Form 7 Problem:
Alongside the Form 6 controversy is a serious problem with Form 7. This is the form used to object to someone’s inclusion in the electoral roll. In states like Uttarakhand, Karnataka, and others, large numbers of Form 7 applications have been submitted by unidentified objectors asking for mass deletions of voters whose names are legitimately on the rolls.
The ECI is criticised for not taking effective action against these frivolous applications. When Form 7 applications were found to be fake, criminal proceedings should have been initiated. Instead, the ECI is seen as being slow to act, which has fuelled the perception that it is not equally vigilant in protecting the integrity of voter lists.
The Indian Express reported that more than 16 lakh objections were filed against voters whose names had been validly included in the electoral rolls after due process. Who filed these objections? The ECI has not given a clear answer.
The Booth Level Officers and the Pre-SIR Comparison
The ECI also issued instructions to Booth Level Officers (BLOs), who are the ground-level officials responsible for maintaining electoral rolls at the polling booth level. The BLOs were asked to compare the current electoral roll with the electoral roll before the SIR, identify voters who appeared in the old roll but not in the new one, and prepare a list of such voters.
They were then asked to visit these voters’ houses to check whether they are still resident and eligible, and help them re-enrol using Form 6 if they are found eligible. This seems reasonable on the surface. But it raises a question: if these voters were validly included in the roll before the SIR, why were they removed during the SIR in the first place?
Additionally, the ECI is running two different versions of Form 6. In states where the SIR is ongoing, the modified Declaration Form is being used. In states where the SIR has been completed, the original Form 6 without the Declaration is being used. The simultaneous use of two different standards for voter registration in different parts of the country raises fairness concerns.
A Cause for Concern
What makes this especially concerning is that several of these complaints have come not just from the opposition or civil society, but from within the institution. Fellow Election Commissioners and Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) have raised concerns about being blocked from accessing ECI systems, about being prevented from performing their statutory duties, and about a centralised data management system that allegedly allowed some people to act on behalf of officers without authorisation.
Eleven judges heading Appellate Tribunals in West Bengal also pointed out that technical systems had impeded their work. The Chief Electoral Officer of Maharashtra highlighted problems that prevented Electoral Registration Officers from exercising their own legally mandated judgement.
What the ECI has said in its defence
The ECI has issued several press notes and circulars responding to these concerns. In its press note of September 26, it acknowledged that a Declaration Form had been “attached to Form 6 for SIR” and stated that this was “upheld by the Hon’ble Supreme Court.” It also clarified that “for non-SIR period, the Forms applicable as per Rules will be used.”
The Chief Justice of India, however, observed separately that “no modified Form 6 has been approved by us.” This creates an ambiguity about what exactly the Supreme Court has endorsed, and about whether the ECI’s characterisation of the court’s position is accurate.
On the question of who filed the 16 lakh objections against valid voters, the ECI has not provided a clear public answer. On the use of two different versions of Form 6 simultaneously, the ECI has offered a procedural explanation but not fully addressed the fairness concern.
Why this matters:
It is easy to get lost in the paperwork and see this as a bureaucratic dispute about administrative forms. It is not. Article 326 of the Constitution guarantees the right to vote to every adult citizen of India.
That right cannot be restricted except on grounds explicitly listed in the Constitution. It cannot be narrowed by administrative decisions of the ECI. It cannot be made dependent on submitting documents that the law does not require.
The right to vote belongs to the people of India. The Election Commission exists to protect that right, not to test it.