The Supreme Court declined to strike down the Election Commission's Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, which required voters to furnish documentation to confirm continued eligibility. Petitioners had argued this intensive, document-heavy verification risked disenfranchising the poor, migrants and those without ready documentary proof, but the Court upheld the exercise as an advancement towards free and fair elections.
The case turns on the constitutional architecture of elections: Article 324 gives the Election Commission plenary power over roll preparation, courts being reluctant to micromanage this; Article 325 bars discriminatory exclusion and mandates a common roll; Article 326 grounds voting in adult suffrage as a citizen's right regulated by statute; Article 14 was invoked against arbitrary verification burdens; and Article 329's philosophy of minimal judicial interference in ongoing electoral processes informed the Court's caution.
For exam purposes, remember the distinct roles of Articles 324, 325, 326, 329 and 14 in election law, and that the Court treated the ECI's plenary authority over roll revision as constitutionally sound, rejecting the challenge to SIR's legitimacy while leaving specific safeguards to the judgment's text.