Will the ECI still defy the Supreme Court on Aadhaar?

The snake isn’t dead yet, but it has been defanged. The Supreme Court’s ruling of 8 September may not have decisively stopped the ‘votebandi’ campaign but the threat that millions might lose their right to vote has receded considerably.

This verdict is not a victory for any political party but rather a victory for the invisible ‘demos’ of democracy. Applied nationwide, it could save a hundred million citizens from having their names struck off the rolls in forthcoming iterations of the SIR (special intensive revision) exercise. In that sense, this order — to grant voting rights on the basis of Aadhaar — may well prove to be historic.

At first glance, the order looks limited in scope and technical. The Election Commission of India’s (ECI) SIR experiment in Bihar had raised a host of constitutional, legal and procedural questions. The Supreme Court’s latest directive does not address any fundamental questions; it limits itself to a practical one: what documents must the Election Commission accept when drawing up a new voters’ list?

But that narrow question had become the biggest question in the state’s SIR battlefield. Reason: the ECI’s bizarre new list of documents. Until now, no papers were demanded from existing voters during revisions. Only new applicants had to fill Form 6 and submit one or two documents out of a widely available list. But in its SIR guidelines, the ECI junked nine of those 12 old documents, added eight new ones, and came up with a fresh list of 11 that would be considered valid for the SIR.

Curiously, the ECI struck out all the documents that most people actually possess and introduced new ones that few have. Official data for Bihar’s 18–40 age group reveals the story. Of the old list, only three documents were still valid: passport (held by fewer than 5 per cent in the state), birth certificate (under 2 per cent), and matriculation/degree certificates (about 43 per cent).

Now look at the additions: National Register of Citizens (non-existent in Bihar), government service ID (1 per cent), forest rights title (negligible), permanent residence certificate (doesn’t exist in Bihar), caste certificate (15–20 per cent), land/housing allotment papers (1 per cent). An estimated 1.5–2 crore people in Bihar have none of those papers.

Now consider what it discarded — documents it has long accepted, are still valid elsewhere but were declared invalid for the purposes of this SIR: bank passbook (which 78 per cent have), PAN card (56 per cent), MGNREGA job card (34 per cent), driving licence (8 per cent), and even ration card (64 per cent), which was valid as proof until five years ago.

The most significant omission was Aadhaar. Until now, the ECI has routinely demanded Aadhaar from every new voter, but it was declared invalid for the SIR. This was astonishing because Aadhaar is the only document explicitly recognised by law — under Section 23(4) of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 — for inclusion in the voters’ list.

Apart from the passport, it’s the only document that verifies name, age, parents’ names and residential address. Unlike the passport, it is nearly universal — 88 per cent coverage in Bihar’s total population, and close to 100 per cent among adults.

Which is why the principled battle for universal adult franchise boiled down, in practical terms, to the question of whether Aadhaar would be accepted. Because accepting Aadhaar would mean — give or take a few — a vote for every adult resident.

For precisely that reason, the champions of votebandi had dug in their heels against Aadhaar. The ECI’s argument was that Aadhaar does not prove citizenship. Legally speaking, that was irrelevant — most documents on its own list do not prove citizenship. The same government that links every welfare scheme to Aadhaar is now badmouthing it.

We were told that in some Bihar districts, Aadhaar enrolment was at 140 per cent of the population — an insinuation about the state’s Muslim-majority Seemanchal belt. This was a bald lie: the population data used was from the 2011 Census while the Aadhaar figures were from 2025. By that arithmetic, not just Seemanchal but all of Bihar — and indeed the whole country — would exceed 100 per cent.

Then came the claim that fake Aadhaar cards are easy to make, without asking the obvious question: whose responsibility is it to prevent that? Also hushed up was the fact that residence certificates considered valid by the ECI had recently been issued in the name of a dog and a tractor!

We were told that Aadhaar can be issued to foreigners and persons of Indian origin as well. What we were not told was that those cards have an expiry date.

Still, the ECI doggedly resisted the inclusion of Aadhaar in the list of valid documents. The Court tried suggestions, then hints, then a limited order on deleted names. But the ECI ignored even that and went so far as to take disciplinary action against staff who accepted Aadhaar. At that point, the Court had no choice but to spell it out: Aadhaar must be added to the list, as the twelfth document.

Naturally, its authenticity, like that of any other paper, remains subject to verification.

One can only hope the Election Commission now implements the order in Bihar in the spirit it was delivered and, more importantly, ensures that Aadhaar is included from the outset when SIR is rolled out across the rest of India. Should the ECI still drag its feet, it will only deepen suspicion that it is a party to the political conspiracy to disenfranchise voters.

Yogendra Yadav is a political activist and long-time psephologist. More of his writing may be read here