Twenty-three Opposition parties including Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), have signed a letter to Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant over the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) Special Intensive Review (SIR) that has been dubbed as “illegal” and “unfairly conducted both in Bihar and Bengal;” Independent Member of Parliament (MP), Kapil Sibal is also a signatory. The demand is for the suspension of the ongoing SIR in its present form. Gross irregularities have been detailed.
At the last INDIA bloc meeting at Delhi’s Constitution Club in June, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge announced that the Opposition parties will send a letter to the CJI “regarding serious questions raised about the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), manipulation of the electoral rolls, and the fairness of elections.” This letter dated June 28, 2026 appears to be the first step in this direction.
While DMK and AAP’s signatures on the letter to CJI signal that the two parties come on board on key issues that affect all parties, a senior Opposition leader ruled out any deeper participation in the short term. AAP quit the mega Opposition group in 2025 after agreeing to contest only during the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. The DMK left the alliance last month after the Congress decided to support the Tamil Nadu chief minister C Joseph Vijay-led Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) government.
Why this letter is significant
The detailed letter to the CJI flags the questionable methods by which the Election Commission (ECI) under the present Chief Election Commissioner (CEC), Gyanesh Kumar, in the name of ‘clean up’ of electoral rolls has undertaken an exercise that has had an opposite and anti-democratic outcome! On the Bihar 2025 SIR, the letter states that, “
“This massive exercise just before the assembly elections, was ill-timed and its faulty implementation a monumental disaster. This, despite the fact that electoral rolls, after they were digitized (2002) were continuously revised and updated by the Commission. But a de-novo revision, never attempted in the fashion adopted by the Commission would ordinarily have required at least a year to do, without being suspect. The documentation process, adopted for the first time, was inherently exclusionary and politically motivated. Verification of voters based on filling forms and production of documents, questioning citizenship, left voters disenfranchised. Lakhs of voters did not possess the required documents. Many of them did not have the capacity to fill forms and forward them as mandated. This was particularly true of those who are poor, uneducated, including Dalits, Adivasis, members of the minority community and migrant workers. There were instances, that the Commission was aware of, where videos circulating on the social media showed booth level officers themselves filling the forms by forging signatures, and in some instances, uploading these forms without the consent of the voters. Even deceased persons were shown to be submitting forms. There was complete lack of transparency and administrative confusion in the implementation of this process exacerbated by the timeframe within which it was required to be done. Instructions of the Commission were changed midway from time to time. There was confusion even amongst election officials.”
Besides the letter states that the “grievance redressal mechanism was inadequate and there was a massive arbitrary deletion of names without proper notice. The alleged objective of the exercise was to remove duplicate voters and the names of the deceased and migrants from the voter’s lists. But the process, as implemented, lacked not just transparency but was implemented in a manner unknown to all processes undertaken in the past. The existing updated electoral rolls were used at the time of the Lok Sabha elections (2024). Even in 2014, the then updated electoral rolls reflected an outcome that none questioned. The whole process of the SIR, according to us, was meant to favour the BJP.”
On Bengal, the letter points to the shocking and deliberate malfunctioning by the ECI. The letter alleges that it appears that the Commission “was concerned only with the outcome of that election since it raised no real issues of manipulation in other states like Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Assam where the SIR was not implemented.”
However, states the communication,
It was apparent that the West Bengal Government was under siege with the presence of 2 lakh 40 thousand CAPF personnel. To put this in context, 3 lakh 50 thousand CAPF personnel were deployed for the entire Lok Sabha election in 2024. There was also a massive deletion of names from the electoral rolls, including those arbitrarily removed, under a never-used-before-category titled ‘logical discrepancies’.
This devious ploy alone left 27 lakh people without the right to vote.
This Hon’ble Court (the Supreme Court) constituted Tribunals to dispose of the appeals where names stood deleted. One of the 19 Tribunals hearing the appeals headed by Justice T.S. Sivagnanam, found that of the 1777 names deleted for which appeals were heard by him, 1717 were wrongly deleted. This means 96% of the names were wrongly deleted. If the same proportion is applied on other pending appeals before the 19 tribunals, it would mean that more than 25 lakh voters were unable to cast their votes due to a process which was inherently flawed.
Most of the deletions were found to be in constituencies where the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) was dominant. The SIR is an unusual process with which the ordinary voter is unfamiliar. The requirement of filling forms, forwarding them and furnishing of documents in a country where there is massive poverty and illiteracy is essentially exclusionary.
Massive deletions, non-transparent processes, the unprecedented numbers of CAPF personnel deployed, the nomination of two representatives of the Union government of their choice and the Returning Officer chosen by the blatantly biased Commission at the counting centres, with no nominee of the AITC, made for a partisan process and consequently suspect. The en masse transfer of 483 officials including the then Chief Secretary, Home Secretary and others replaced by officers posted by the Commission was an unusual exercise. Such extreme steps were not taken in any election in the past.
Stating that before launching any such exercise like an SIR, the ECI must have previous inquiries and investigations to show “the extent to which the electoral rolls in each state were polluted and why it was necessary to do this exercise for these elections and in such haste.” However, “Even many BLOs in West Bengal were deprived of their right to vote.” While the ECI has been provided enough data and information to show that public confidence in the SIR process has been eroded, the ECI remains deaf to all independent representations, assert the Opposition.
The Letter to the Chief Justice of India (CJI) Justice Surya Kant acknowledges that such a communication by the Opposition to the highest judiciary is unusual, asserts that it is warranted given the unprecedented crisis for institutional democracy and the faith of all Indians in Indian democracy. Hence, the Opposition has demanded through this letter that the “impending SIR in the states of Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat etc. be suspended” and such a process launched if at all when the next Assembly Election is five years away.
Though no details have been provided, the communication makes a brief reference to the fact that “serious questions are also being raised about the process of electronic voting, and in particular about the role of electronic voting machines,” and hence “return to paper ballots” may be the answer.”
Finally urging that “ a transparent electoral process, in which every Indian has full confidence, is essential to sustaining public trust in our democracy,” the letter also points out how law enforcement agencies like the CBI, ED and NIA “ are used not only to target those in opposition. These agencies are also used for the purpose of manipulating the outcome of results in the elections, apart from bringing down elected governments.”
Senior Opposition leader and Trinamool’s Rajya Sabha floor leader Derek O’Brien wrote, “Good going from INDIA. And yes, @AamAadmiParty @arivalayam DMK also signed the joint letter to CJI.”
The letter may be read here:
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