From Our Correspondent
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday said it had not approved any modification to Form 6, the application used to enrol first-time voters, directly contradicting an Election Commission claim that a new declaration attached to the form during the Special Intensive Revision had been upheld by the Court.
“Any modified Form 6 has not been approved by us. Let us be clear. When the record is produced, we would like to see who has modified,” Chief Justice Surya Kant said. The Bench, also comprising Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V. Mohana, was hearing petitions seeking action against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.
The remark answers a claim the Commission made in a press note on September 26. “The declaration attached to Form 6 for SIR has been upheld by the Hon’ble Supreme Court,” the note said. “For non-SIR period, the Forms applicable as per Rules (the Registration of Electors Rules 1960) will be used.”
Senior Advocate Menaka Guruswamy, appearing for advocate Shailendra Mani Tripathi, told the Court that the online Form 6 had been unlawfully altered. She referred to reporting in The Indian Express and said two new conditions had been added to the form circulated to first-time voters, including in Delhi. The statutory form itself has not been amended. What changed, from July, was the version on the Commission’s ECINet portal.
The added section asks an applicant whether he or she, or a parent, was mapped in the last Special Intensive Revision. Some accounts of the declaration also refer to a grandparent. The field had to be answered before the online application could be completed. The Commission has described the requirement as an additional declaration, not a change to Form 6, and has said it spares the applicant other documents.
The petition says the change was made despite objection from within the Commission. It records that on August 13 Election Commissioner Sukhbir Singh Sandhu described the digital alteration as “unauthorised and illegal,” said it was causing arbitrary harassment of young, eligible first-time electors, and ordered its withdrawal. A second Commissioner had objected on the ground that a statutory form cannot be altered without the Central Government amending the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960.
The Commission’s answer has been that the Supreme Court already settled the question in its May 27 judgment on the Bihar revision. That judgment, in Association for Democratic Reforms v. Election Commission of India, upheld the revision ordered on June 24, 2025, under Article 324 of the Constitution read with Section 21(3) of the Representation of the People Act, 1950. Under that order a new elector had to file Form 6 with a declaration in Annexure D. The Court accepted a limited residual power to set a documentation framework for an intensive revision, and said the power was not unbounded.
The July change to the online form came after that judgment. The Court had no occasion to examine it. Monday’s observation is the Chief Justice saying the Commission cannot treat the May verdict as approval for a later modification. The Bench has sought the record. It has not suspended the Chief Election Commissioner, and it has not held the revision void. The Chief Justice also told Guruswamy that the prayers in the petition appeared omnibus.
The question that follows is whether an adverse finding, if one comes, would strip the Bihar and West Bengal elections of legal legitimacy. On the law as it stands, Monday’s remark does not do that.
Bihar’s revision was conducted under the June 2025 order and Annexure D, the framework the May judgment considered. The disputed online alteration belongs to July 2026, after the Bihar election and after the judgment. A later finding against the portal change would not, by itself, reach back to that poll.
West Bengal, revised in a later phase, is differently placed if the modified online form was used to enrol first-time voters on the roll governing the election. Even there, Article 329(b) of the Constitution bars a challenge to an election except by an election petition. Courts have consistently refused to void a concluded election in a collateral writ because a step in preparing the roll is later found defective. The ordinary remedy is prospective: withdraw the altered form, restore the statutory one, and reopen inclusion for those kept out.
Section 32 of the 1950 Act, which punishes specified breaches of official duty in the preparation and correction of rolls, is the provision the petition invokes. Whether it is attracted will depend on the record the Court has now called for.
What Monday settles is narrower, and already damaging to the Commission’s account. The press note of September 26 said the Court had upheld the declaration attached to Form 6. The Chief Justice has said the Court approved no modified Form 6, and wants to know who changed it. The legitimacy of that claim is gone. The legitimacy of the Bihar and West Bengal elections is a separate question, and the Court has not answered it.
