SIR had no way to flag ‘infiltrators’, Reporters Collective investigation finds

• RC report finds the ECI’s software had no option to flag deleted voters as foreign nationals.

• RTI replies from more than 100 Bihar electoral registration officers record no non-citizens identified during SIR.

• Investigation finds no facility to mark voters as non-Indians in West Bengal and around 86,000 Uttar Pradesh deletion forms without recorded reasons.

The Election Commission of India (ECI) had no mechanism to identify and tag foreign nationals among voters deleted during the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, an investigation by The Reporters’ Collective (RC) has found, raising questions over claims that the exercise was intended to weed out ‘infiltrators’ or ghuspaithiye.

The investigation comes after Union home minister Amit Shah accused Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi of attempting to protect infiltrators while criticising the revision exercise. Shah had suggested that foreign nationals were among the 13.39 crore voters deleted from electoral rolls.

However, RC’s examination of the ECI’s software and responses to right to information (RTI) applications found that officials had no option to mark voters as foreign nationals. More than 100 electoral registration officers in Bihar, the first state to undergo SIR in June 2025, confirmed that they had no records of non-Indian citizens identified during the exercise, the publication reported.

Although the ECI had cited the detection of illegal immigrants as one of the reasons for conducting SIR, its official deletion figures in Bihar listed voters as absent, shifted or dead, among other categories, without identifying any as foreign nationals.

RC also found that the ECI did not directly answer its questions about whether it had complied with the Supreme Court’s direction to refer cases of people deleted on grounds of non-citizenship to the competent authority under the Citizenship Act, 1955. The Union ministry of home affairs is the relevant authority. It remains unclear whether the commission submitted such a list to the court.

The investigation further found that, during the second phase of SIR covering 12 states, the ECI’s internal rules did not require booth-level officers to identify or report non-Indian citizens. The prescribed grounds for deleting voters who did not return enumeration forms were absence, shifting residence, duplication and death.

In West Bengal, RC examined the ECI’s ERONET software and found no option for election officials to mark a voter as a non-Indian. The publication also reported that around 86,000 voters deleted during SIR hearings in Uttar Pradesh had no reasons recorded on their automatically generated Form 7 deletion forms.

The findings raise questions about how claims of detecting infiltrators during SIR were substantiated, particularly as political leaders have cited the exercise to justify action against alleged illegal immigrants.

The ECI has not publicly disclosed figures showing how many foreign nationals it identified during the revision. RC said the commission did not directly respond to its questions about the suspected foreign nationals allegedly found during the exercise.