ECI cited the Supreme Court. The Court asked who changed Form 6

The Election Commission of India has managed to turn a voter form into a credibility problem. Its September 26 press note said the declaration attached to Form 6 for the Special Intensive Revision had been “upheld by the Hon’ble Supreme Court”. On October 5, Chief Justice Surya Kant said the Court had approved no modified Form 6. “Let us be clear,” he said, while asking to see the record and determine “who has modified it”.

The contradiction is documented. The conclusion that the ECI deliberately misled the public is not yet a court finding. That distinction matters, particularly when the institution responsible for electoral rolls is asking citizens to trust its paperwork. The Supreme Court has sought the ECI’s records and issued notice to the Commission and the Centre. It is examining the authorisation and legal status of the additional declaration, not yet ruling that it was unlawful or that it excluded voters.

The ECI’s defence is that the statutory Form 6 was not changed. It says an additional SIR-related declaration was attached to the online process, and that the Court’s May 27 judgment upheld the Bihar SIR framework. That judgment did recognise a residual authority to create documentation for an intensive revision, but also said the power was “not unbounded”. The online declaration was reportedly introduced in July, after the judgment. Whether a general approval of the SIR framework amounted to approval of that later portal addition is precisely the question the ECI’s press note tried to glide past.

The BJP’s response has been to call the Court’s notice “democracy in action” while accusing Rahul Gandhi of creating “anarchy”. Neither slogan answers who authorised the declaration. The Centre, which has been issued notice, has not bothered to put its position on the specific contradiction on the record in the material reviewed. The ECI may eventually have a defensible explanation. It does not have one yet. For an election body, borrowing the Supreme Court’s authority first and producing the paperwork later is not administrative neatness; it is institutional carelessness with a national election system.