The referee question has split.

One half is whether a Special Intensive Revision can be used to clean an electoral roll. On that, the Supreme Court has already ruled. The other half is whether the paperwork now attached to new enrolments was approved by that ruling. On 5 October 2026 the Chief Justice said it was not.

What the May judgment actually decided

On 27 May 2026, in Association for Democratic Reforms v. Election Commission of India (2026 INSC 564), a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V. M. Pancholi upheld the Bihar SIR ordered on 24 June 2025. The exercise was traced to Article 324 and Section 21(3) of the Representation of the People Act, 1950. Section 21(3) allows a special revision “at any time,” for reasons to be recorded, “in such manner as [the Commission] may think fit.”

The Court said the Commission “has the authority to conduct the SIR exercise and did not transgress any statutory or constitutional provision.” A special revision, it held, is materially different from a routine revision under Section 21(2) read with Rule 25. It “cannot be invalidated merely because it does not conform in every respect to the ordinary modalities contemplated for routine revision.” The operative line was that the SIR “does not supplant the Representation of the People Act and the Rules” but “breathes life into the constitutional mandate under Article 324 within the precise statutory contours provided by Section 21(3).”

Citizenship was dealt with as a condition of enrolment, not as a status the Commission can finally decide. Section 16 of the 1950 Act bars non-citizens from the roll. The Court said the Commission may examine questions bearing on citizenship, but only to decide inclusion or exclusion, and with the presumption that attaches to a name already on the roll. Where the papers “do not inspire confidence,” the Commission may decline enrolment or start deletion. That, the Court said, “does not amount to a declaration that the individual is not a citizen of India.” It reflects only that the Commission is not satisfied, for electoral purposes, that the statutory conditions are met. Cases deleted from the 2003 roll on a citizenship opinion were to be referred within four weeks to the competent authority under the Citizenship Act, 1955, with notice and a hearing, preferably before the next relevant election. The Commission’s view cannot assume finality on citizenship.

Bihar’s published arithmetic is the scale against which that ruling has to be read. The pre-SIR roll was about 7.89 crore. About 65 lakh names were omitted from the August 2025 draft. After further deletions and about 21.53 lakh Form 6 additions, the final roll of 30 September 2025 was about 7.42 crore. The judgment treated the exercise as proportionate and noted safeguards, including publication of the excluded list and Aadhaar as a twelfth identity document. Aadhaar was not accepted as proof of citizenship.

The sentence the Commission is now leaning on

The judgment also dealt with forms. Form 6, prescribed under the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, “sets out a framework of documentation” tailored to ordinary revision. The Court said it may not be capable of literal application to an SIR. The Commission therefore “retains a degree of residual authority to formulate and adopt a documentation framework suited to the exigencies of a special intensive revision.”

The next sentence is the limit. “Such authority, however, is not unbounded.” A departure from the statutory framework must have a rational nexus with the object of the SIR. Residual authority is not a power to rewrite a rule. Under Section 28 of the 1950 Act, the rules are made by the Central government, by notification, and they are laid before Parliament.

What the Court had in front of it was the June 2025 Bihar protocol, including the additional declaration in Annexure D, filed with Form 6. It did not have the later online question.

What changed after the judgment

In July 2026 the online Form 6 on the Commission’s portal began asking whether the applicant, or a parent or grandparent, appeared in the electoral roll of the last SIR. Applicants were asked for constituency, part and serial details. Reports said the field was not marked mandatory, but the application could not be completed without an answer. A false statement on the declaration can attract Section 31 of the 1950 Act: imprisonment up to one year, a fine, or both.

That question arrived after the judgment. The Indian Express reported that Election Commissioner Vivek Joshi had already recorded, on 16 May 2026, that Form 6 “cannot be altered without making amendments in the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960,” and that the proposal should go to the government. Sukhbir Singh Sandhu concurred on 19 May. On 13 August, after the online change was reported, Sandhu wrote that it had been made “in spite of these very clear views expressed by two Election Commissioners,” called it “unauthorised/illegal,” and said it “must be removed immediately.”

The same investigation reported at least 14 written objections by the two Commissioners between October 2025 and August 2026, covering Form 6, roll software, appeals and work allocation. The Commission has not disputed that the notes exist. It has described them as part of decision-making, said SIR orders were unanimous, and said the letters to the Cabinet Secretary concerned an officer on deputation rather than policy. On 26 September it said agendas would be circulated in advance and minutes issued.

On the form, the 26 September note said: “The declaration attached to Form 6 for SIR has been upheld by the Hon’ble Supreme Court. For the non-SIR period, the Forms applicable as per Rules (the Registration of Electors Rules 1960) will be used.” After the 5 October hearing, Commission sources said not a comma of statutory Form 6 had been changed, and that only a declaration had been added under the Bihar protocol. The Commission has also said the extra declaration is dropped in states where SIR has ended.

Those are different claims. “We did not amend the statutory form” is not the same as “the Court upheld this declaration.” Annexure D and the July mapping question are not the same document. The second was not before the Court in May.

What the Chief Justice said on 5 October

The point reached the Court on 5 October 2026, during petitions seeking action against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over alleged unilateral SIR decisions, including Shailendra Mani Tripathi v. Union of India. Senior Advocate Menaka Guruswamy raised the Form 6 change and cited deletions of about 30 per cent in Delhi and 25 per cent in West Bengal. Those figures are submissions, not findings.

CJI Surya Kant’s reported words were: “Any modified Form 6 has not been approved by us. Let’s be clear. When the record is produced, we would like to see who has modified.” A report in The Hindu rendered the same clarification as: “We are making it clear, any modifications to Form 6 have not been made by us.” The bench, with Justices Bagchi and V. Mohana, said it would examine the decisions and that a decision not in accordance with law can be annulled. It refused an interim suspension of the Chief Election Commissioner. It said it would not act on a newspaper report alone and would wait for the Commission’s response. Notice went to the Commission and the Centre.

That is an oral observation in a pending case, not a recall of the May judgment. It does three narrower things. It rejects the 26 September attribution. It puts the author of the change in issue. It leaves the legality of the declaration to the record, rather than to the Commission’s reading of residual authority.

What remains open

The May ruling still stands. SIR, as a special revision to test eligibility and clean the roll, was upheld. Aadhaar remains identity evidence, not citizenship evidence. A deletion is still not a citizenship verdict.

What does not stand is the claim that this Form 6 declaration was approved. The open questions are factual and legal, and they are now on notice. Was the July question a modification of a statutory form, which Section 28 reserves to the Centre, or an annexure within the residual authority the Court described? If it is the second, where is the rational nexus, and why did two Commissioners record that the Rules had to be amended first? Who authorised the online change after those notes? And for a first-time voter whose parents were never on an SIR roll, does the mapping question function as a document, or as a barrier the May judgment did not examine?

Until the record is filed, the clean-roll case and the trust case should not be collapsed into one another. The Court has upheld the first. It has said, in terms, that it has not approved the form the Commission is citing it for.