The Supreme Court on Monday clarified that it had not approved any modified version of Form 6, the statutory application form used to enrol new voters. The top court sought the Election Commission’s records to establish who authorised changes to the online form.
This observation has brought into focus a dispute that began with the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise in Bihar in June 2025 and escalated after an SIR-linked declaration appeared on the online Form 6 on the ECINET portal.
The ECI has maintained that Form 6 itself was never amended, and that the disputed provision was a separate SIR declaration. It has also said that its SIR orders were unanimously approved, a claim countered by an Indian Express report showing that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi raised formal objections to the change.
In this explainer, HT gives a date-by-date account of how the controversy unfolded:
June 24, 2025: ECI orders SIR in Bihar
The Election Commission ordered an SIR of Bihar’s electoral rolls, the first such intensive revision in the state since 2003. The stated objectives included ensuring that all eligible citizens were enrolled and that ineligible persons were excluded. The ECI cited rapid urbanisation, migration, deaths not being reported, and the alleged inclusion of foreign illegal immigrants as reasons for undertaking the exercise.
The order said that a person seeking registration as a new elector would have to submit Form 6 along with an additional Declaration Form mapping themselves or their parents to the 2002 base rolls.
June-July 2025: Bihar SIR proceeds
{{/usCountry}}The order said that a person seeking registration as a new elector would have to submit Form 6 along with an additional Declaration Form mapping themselves or their parents to the 2002 base rolls.
June-July 2025: Bihar SIR proceeds
{{/usCountry}}The ECI began the Bihar exercise from June 25, with house-to-house enumeration. The statutory Form 6 remained the ordinary application for inclusion, while the online form used for SIR required the additional declaration.
October 27, 2025: SIR phase 2 begins
The EC ordered the next phase of SIR for 12 states and Union territories, with January 1, 2026 as the qualifying date. The enumeration phase began in November. The order extended the Bihar framework to a much larger geographical area.
May 14, 2026: Phase 3 of SIR announced
The ECI announced the third phase of SIR in 16 states and three Union territories. These included Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Odisha, Punjab, Sikkim, Tripura, Telangana and Uttarakhand, besides Delhi, Chandigarh and Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu.
The Commission said the exercise would eventually cover the entire country, except Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, whose schedules would be announced later.
May 27, 2026: Supreme Court upholds Bihar SIR
The Supreme Court upheld the ECI’s power to conduct the Bihar SIR.
The judgment is important because it recorded that, under the June 24, 2025 SIR order, a person applying for registration as a new voter was required to submit Form 6 along with Annexure D.
The court therefore recognised the existence of the additional declaration within the SIR framework. It observed that while Form 6, as prescribed under the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, lays down a documentary framework for voter registration, it designed for the ordinary revision process under the Representation of the People Act and cannot always be applied literally to an exercise like SIR. The court said that “the Commission, therefore, retains a degree of residual authority to formulate an appropriate documentation framework suited to the exigencies of a Special Intensive Revision.”
It, however, did not say anything about modifying a statutory form. This forms the core of the current controversy.
September 23, 2026: Indian Express reports internal objections by ECs to Form 6 change
The newspaper reported that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally objected at least 14 times over 10 months to decisions and steps taken without their knowledge.
One of the cases concerned Form 6.
September 24, 2026: ECI says decisions were unanimous
Responding to the investigation, the ECI said differing views and observations were a normal part of institutional deliberation.
It said that all decisions taken by the Commission over the previous year, including electoral-roll revision and SIR, were the outcome of “unanimous decisions of the full Commission.”
But the Commission did not explain in that response who had approved the Form 6 change or why the online declaration appeared despite the objections.
September 26, 2026: ECI reiterates its legal position
The Commission met and issued a detailed press note. It said, “The declaration attached to Form 6 for SIR has been upheld by the Hon’ble Supreme Court.”
It added that during a non-SIR period, the forms prescribed under the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 would be used.
September 30, 2026: ECI removes the declaration in states where SIR is over
The ECI removed the SIR declaration from the online Form 6 on ECINET in states where the SIR had concluded. The declaration remained on the portal for states where the SIR was still underway.
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The move followed the ECI’s September 26 statement that the statutory forms under the Registration of Electors Rules would apply outside the SIR period.
October 5, 2026: Supreme Court says it did not approve the modified Form 6
The controversy reached the Supreme Court on Monday. During the hearing of petitions concerning CEC Gyanesh Kumar’s functioning, Senior Advocate Menaka Guruswamy referred to the Form 6 issue and argued that the altered form had been used in Delhi.
Chief Justice Surya Kant said, “Let’s be very clear. Any modified Form 6 has not been approved by us.” The CJI added that once the Election Commission submits its report, the court wants to see “who has modified what.”