Supreme Court to hear Rahul Gandhi’s plea against Election Commission as ECI insists SIR orders were unanimous
The Supreme Court is scheduled to take the joint petition by Rahul Gandhi and leaders of 12 Opposition parties on Tuesday, October 27. In the plea filed by INDIA bloc questions were raised on functioning of the Election Commission during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.
The poll body, in its reply late on Monday, issued a blunt message on the pleas demanding the accountability of CEC. The affidavit says all three SIR orders, dated June 24, 2025, October 27, 2025 and May 14, 2026, were unanimous, and that it was approved by the CEC and both Election Commissioners. On Form 6, the form used to apply for a place on the voters’ list, the Commission said it had not amended it,but added it to the formalities under the SIR exercise as a mandatory document. The form requires voters to dispense their link with their parents and grandparents in the previous electoral rolls.
“On a review of the manner in which Form 6 and the Declaration were displayed on the IT platform, some concerns arose for the reason that the manner in which the Declaration was presented in the online system was such that it could be construed as though an amendment of Form 6 had been made,” the Election Commission wrote in the affidavit.
It also called the lead petition built on a single media report, and not maintainable. Refuting claims that the two ECs ignored the flagging, the poll body said, “The files put up by the respective divisions are sent first to one Election Commissioner and thereafter to the other Election Commissioner and then finally to the Chief Election Commissioner… Such approved decisions of the Commission are duly noted in the relevant files of the Election Commission and bear the signature of the ECs and CEC. Thereafter, the decision is notified and implemented by the ECI Secretariat.”
The other side tells a very different story. The lead petition against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar accuses him of unilateral decisions on SIR, which it links to the deletion of 13.36 crore names at the draft stage. Gandhi’s own plea, filed on October 12, seeks a pause on SIR across states and an independent committee led by a retired Supreme Court judge. The Court has already issued notice to the ECI, the CEC and the other Election Commissioners. Before the Commission’s affidavit, the BJP’s Ravi Shankar Prasad had argued that the unanimity claim exposed the Congress and Rahul Gandhi.
How the fight reached the streets
On October 7, Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi and other INDIA bloc leaders were detained near Jantar Mantar on the second day of their march against Kumar. Gandhi demanded that Kumar “will have to resign.” The INDIA bloc has scheduled another large scale march on November 1st at the Ramlila Maidan, New Delhi.
On October 23, more than 100 protesters were detained in Delhi when police stopped a march towards the ECI headquarters. The organizers, People Against SIR and the Samyukt Kisan Morcha, more than 300 organisations had joined them.
In Chennai, nine student and youth groups ran a 24-hour protest under the banner “Chennai’s Jantar Mantar 2.0.” Student groups followed with a demonstration in Hyderabad on October 25.