How can teacher-BLOs decide citizenship, petitioners ask SC

Petitioners in the Supreme Court on Thursday (November 27, 2025) flagged the Election Commission (EC)’s “dangerous and unreasonable” move to have schoolteachers, deployed as booth-level officers (BLOs) in the special intensive revision (SIR) exercise, determine the citizenship of voters.

Appearing before a Bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi, senior advocates Kapil Sibal and A.M. Singhvi said the court had spent the past months of SIR hearings giving the “healing touch”, while in the process relegating to the background the law that intensive revisions ought to be limited to a constituency or a small group, and not done en masse, State after State, across the country.

Mr. Sibal submitted that the Representation of the People Act (ROPA), 1950, required a person to be 18 years of age and be ordinarily resident in a constituency to be eligible for registration in the electoral roll. He said Aadhaar could very well be used to verify both these details.

The senior lawyer said a BLO had no authority to determine citizenship. “Whether a person is an Indian citizen or not is decided by the Ministry of Home Affairs. Whether a person is of unsound mind is decided by the competent court. Laws like Prevention of Corruption Act and the Representation of the People Act would form the statutory basis for disqualifying a person from the electoral roll. You cannot ask the BLO to ascertain all this,” Mr. Sibal said.

He accused the Election Commission (EC) of supplanting the entire procedure for the revision of electoral roll. “Introduction of enumeration forms and shifting of burden of proof of citizenship… It is like the burden of proof placed on a foreigner. The conditions exclusionary which were existing before Independence is now existing after Independence,” Mr. Sibal submitted.

‘Beyond its domain’

Mr. Singhvi called the SIR an en masse exercise devised by the EC imagining there was a “huge, marauding influx” of illegal immigrants into India.

He said in the bargain, “crores and crores of people, State after State, are being asked to prove their citizenship. Where is the EC’s jurisdiction to do this? Article 324 [power of the EC to conduct elections] cannot be used to plug holes in the EC’s jurisdiction… Is the EC saying that an elector’s presence in the 2024 and 2025 rolls is as a presumptive guest?” he asked.

The senior counsel pointed out that the power of EC under Section 21(3) of ROPA to “direct a special revision of the electoral roll for any constituency or part of a constituency in such manner as it may think fit” cannot be interpreted as an en masse exercise.

He argued that, even if the EC had to assess citizenship for the purpose of voting, it could only be done if someone raised an objection. Otherwise, there were two laws, the Foreigners Act and the Citizenship Act, which governed illegal immigrants.

The court adjourned the hearing to December 2.