Bengaluru: The high court Wednesday sought response from the State Election Commission (SEC), the state govt and the Election Commission of India in response to a petition challenging the separate special intensive revision (SIR) undertaken in select wards of Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA) by the SEC.Justice Suraj Govindaraj posted the petition filed by Vivek M and four other petitioners, all residents of Bengaluru, to July 15 for consideration, while granting time to the respondents to file their statement of objections, if any, by that time.The petitioners claimed that the SEC’s own governing rule — Rule 3 and 30 of the Greater Bengaluru Governance (Registration of Electors) Rules, 2025 — contemplates that electoral rolls for GBA wards shall be prepared by adopting the legislative assembly electoral roll for the time being in force. The mechanism prescribed is one of adoption, not of independent creation or revision. The June 19 order for independent SIR by the SEC violates its own governing rules, the petitioners added.In its plain and correct meaning, Article 243ZA vests SEC only with the power of “superintendence, direction and control” over the preparation of electoral rolls for the municipalities. The word “preparation” refers to the administrative act of preparing ward-wise rolls by adopting the parent Assembly constituency electoral rolls, they asserted.Running independent enumeration means duplicating work of BLOs, house-to-house verification, hearing on claims and objections, EVMs/ ballot infrastructure and security deployment, ie, once for the Representation of the People Act rolls and second time for the ward rolls. This concern was highlighted in the Law Commission’s 255th report in 2015 wherein it was observed that the preparation of separate voters’ list causes duplication of the effort and expenditure, the petitioners stated.The June 19 order was passed by the SEC, a mere three days after ECI froze the assembly constituency electoral rolls on June 16, 2026 for the purpose of nationwide, month-long, structured SIR phase-3 exercise (June 20 to Oct 7). The SEC’s exercise in contrast is compressed in nature, with everything needing to be accomplished within five weeks, to be completed by July 31, 2026. Such exercise for the same households, undertaken without prior consultation with the ECI, is an evidence of non-application of mind. The duplication of the exercise is also waste of public money, the petitioners pointed out while seeking intervention of the high court.
