No Deletion Without Notice: Justice Ujjal Bhuyan on Voter Rights, Electoral Roll Protection and Due Process Under the Constitution

Supreme Court Justice Ujjal Bhuyan declares that removing a voter from the electoral roll without providing notice and a fair hearing violates constitutional safeguards. A detailed analysis of the due-process mandate under Section 22 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, and its interplay with Articles 326 and 14 of the Indian Constitution. Supreme Court Justice Ujjal Bhuyan, speaking at the valedictory ceremony of the 19th NALSAR-Justice B.R. Sawhney Memorial Moot Court Competition at NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, delivered an emphatic address on the inviolability of the right to vote. Justice Bhuyan observed that except in the case of a deceased voter, a citizen's name, once entered in the electoral roll, cannot be removed without issuing notice and affording a reasonable opportunity of hearing. He described any process that leads to the mass disenfranchisement of citizens as "intrinsically arbitrary" and a "negation of the constitutional order." This article analyses the constitutional and statutory foundations of his observations, their grounding in the landmark precedent of Lal Babu Hussain v. Electoral Registration Officer (1995), and their significance in the context of the ongoing controversy surrounding the Election Commission of India's Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. The right to vote occupies a singular place in the architecture of Indian democracy. It is the mechanism through which every adult citizen, regardless of wealth, caste, religion, or social standing, participates in the governance of the country. When a Supreme Court judge publicly warns that tampering with this right amounts to "taking out the soul from the body," the legal community and the citizenry at large are compelled to take notice. Justice Ujjal Bhuyan's recent address at NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, does precisely that. It places the procedural safeguards surrounding electoral roll maintenance at the centre of constitutional discourse and reminds every institution entrusted with electoral administration that due process is not optional — it is the bedrock on which the legitimacy of elections rests. The Constitutional Foundation of the Right to Vote Justice Bhuyan anchored his analysis in two provisions of the Constitution that, read together, form the backbone of India's electoral democracy. Article 325 mandates a single general electoral roll for every territorial constituency, prohibiting exclusion on the grounds of religion, race, caste, or sex. Article 326 goes further: it provides that elections to the Lok Sabha and State Legislative Assemblies shall be conducted on the basis of adult suffrage, entitling every citizen who has attained the age of eighteen years to be registered as a voter, subject only to disqualifications expressly permitted under the Constitution — non-residence, unsoundness of mind, crime, or corrupt and illegal practices. Justice Bhuyan emphasised that while the Supreme Court has in several earlier decisions characterised the right to vote as a statutory right rather than a fundamental right, it has nonetheless recognised it as a constitutional right rooted in Article 326. He relied in particular on the observations in People's Union for Civil Liberties v. Union of India, where the Court acknowledged that the right to vote cannot be divorced from Article 326. In Justice Bhuyan's view, this recognition elevates the right to vote to a plane where it becomes central to the Basic Structure doctrine itself, inseparable from the concepts of free and fair elections and the rule of law. He underscored this point with a vivid constitutional vision: "One may be a billionaire, and one may be a rickshaw puller; yet both will have their votes, and the value of their votes would be equal." This, he said, is the "transformational vision" of the Indian Constitution — a vision conceived during the freedom struggle and formalised by the Constituent Assembly when it chose to reject the colonial model of restricted franchise under the Government of India Act, 1935, in favour of universal adult suffrage. The Statutory Safeguard: Section 22 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 The operative legal provision that translates this constitutional guarantee into a procedural safeguard is Section 22 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950. This section empowers Electoral Registration Officers to correct entries in the electoral roll, including by deleting entries where necessary. Critically, however, the proviso to Section 22 stipulates that before any deletion or correction is made, the Electoral Registration Officer shall give the person concerned a reasonable opportunity of being heard in respect of the proposed action. Justice Bhuyan drew attention to this proviso to make a simple but powerful point: deletion from the electoral roll is not an administrative housekeeping exercise that can be carried out unilaterally and in bulk. It is a quasi-judicial act that carries severe civil consequences — it strips a citizen of the most fundamental instrument of democratic participation. For this reason, the statute requires notice and hearing, and the only exception is the case of a deceased voter, where the factual basis for removal is self-evident and no hearing would serve any purpose. The Precedent: Lal Babu Hussain v. Electoral Registration Officer (1995) Justice Bhuyan's observations find strong jurisprudential support in the Supreme Court's landmark ruling in Lal Babu Hussain and Others v. Electoral Registration Officer and Others, decided in 1995. In that case, the Court confronted a situation where electoral authorities in Bombay and Delhi had initiated mass deletions of voters from minority-dominated and economically weaker areas on the basis of unverified police reports alleging that the individuals concerned were foreign nationals. Thousands of names were removed without any meaningful inquiry. The Supreme Court, in a bench led by Chief Justice A.M. Ahmadi, struck down the deletions and laid down a comprehensive set of guidelines. The Court held that once a person's name appears on the electoral roll, there is a presumption that the necessary verification was carried out at the time of inclusion. Any subsequent attempt to remove that name must begin with a fresh, specific notice disclosing the material on which the suspicion is based. The Electoral Registration Officer must conduct the inquiry with a quasi-judicial mindset, entertain all forms of evidence, and pass a reasoned, speaking order. The Court categorically prohibited the mechanical reliance on police reports and extraneous instructions. The Lal Babu Hussain decision established the principle that due process in electoral roll maintenance is not a formality but a constitutional imperative. It is this principle that Justice Bhuyan has now reinforced in the sharpest possible terms. The Immediate Context: The SIR Controversy Although Justice Bhuyan did not name any specific exercise or authority, his remarks carry unmistakable significance in the context of the Election Commission of India's Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. The SIR exercise, conducted across several states including Bihar and West Bengal, has resulted in the reported deletion of approximately 13.3 crore entries from draft electoral rolls across multiple phases. Opposition parties have described the exercise as "sinister" and have demanded the restoration of deleted names, alleging that the process lacked transparency and denied affected voters a meaningful opportunity to contest their exclusion. The Supreme Court, in its judgment of 27 May 2026 in Association for Democratic Reforms and Others v. Election Commission of India, upheld the Election Commission's power to conduct the SIR and held that the measures adopted were not disproportionate. However, the judgment also acknowledged the concerns raised by petitioners regarding transparency and the risk of disenfranchisement. Notably, appellate tribunals set up in West Bengal to hear exclusion cases reportedly resulted in the re-inclusion of ninety-three per cent of the voters who challenged their removal — a statistic that raises serious questions about the rigour and fairness of the initial deletion process. It is against this backdrop that Justice Bhuyan's address assumes its full weight. His insistence that "no authority can do it; no court can condone it; no one is above the Constitution" reads as a clear articulation of the limits within which electoral administration must operate, regardless of the scale or ostensible purpose of any revision exercise. The Deeper Constitutional Warning Perhaps the most significant aspect of Justice Bhuyan's address is his framing of mass disenfranchisement as a violation not merely of statutory procedure but of the constitutional order itself. He observed that the Indian Constitution does not contemplate two classes of citizens — those with voting rights and those without. Any process that creates such a division, he said, violates Articles 326 and 14 of the Constitution and is "intrinsically arbitrary." This is a formulation with considerable doctrinal force. By linking the right to vote simultaneously to Article 326 (adult suffrage) and Article 14 (equality before law), Justice Bhuyan places electoral roll integrity within the framework of the anti-arbitrariness doctrine that the Supreme Court has developed over decades through cases such as E.P. Royappa v. State of Tamil Nadu and Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India. Under this framework, state action that is arbitrary is, by definition, violative of Article 14. If mass deletion of voters without adequate procedural safeguards is arbitrary, then it is unconstitutional — not merely irregular. Justice Bhuyan also rooted the right to vote in the historical narrative of the freedom struggle, describing it as "a manifestation of our freedom achieved after so much of struggle and sacrifice." He recalled Dr. B.R. Ambedkar's insistence in the Constituent Assembly debates that the right to adult suffrage must be written into the text of the Constitution itself, rather than being left to ordinary legislation that could be amended at will. He further invoked Nani Palkhivala's warning that "freedom cannot be inherited in the bloodstream" and must be defended by every generation. Key Takeaways for Legal Practitioners and Students Justice Bhuyan's address, though delivered at an academic event and not from the bench, carries persuasive authority and crystallises several principles of immediate relevance. First, deletion from the electoral roll is a quasi-judicial act that must comply with the principles of natural justice, specifically the requirement of notice and a reasonable opportunity of being heard, as mandated by the proviso to Section 22 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950. Second, the only exception to this requirement is the removal of a deceased voter's name, where the factual predicate is unambiguous. Third, the right to vote is a constitutional right anchored in Article 326 and is intertwined with the equality guarantee of Article 14, meaning that any process of mass disenfranchisement is subject to scrutiny under the anti-arbitrariness standard. Fourth, the precedent established in Lal Babu Hussain v. Electoral Registration Officer (1995) remains the controlling authority on procedural fairness in electoral roll maintenance, requiring specific notice, quasi-judicial inquiry, consideration of all evidence, and a reasoned order. Fifth, no administrative body — including the Election Commission — operates above the Constitution, and the scale of an electoral exercise does not diminish the procedural obligations owed to each individual voter. Conclusion Justice Ujjal Bhuyan's observations serve as both a legal restatement and a constitutional warning. They remind us that the right to vote is not a privilege dispensed by the state; it is a constitutional entitlement that inheres in every adult citizen by virtue of Article 326. The procedural safeguard of notice and hearing before deletion is not a bureaucratic inconvenience — it is the mechanism through which the Constitution prevents the silent erosion of democratic participation. In a democracy where the value of a billionaire's vote equals that of a rickshaw puller's, no process that strips millions of citizens of this right without affording them a fair hearing can claim constitutional legitimacy. The soul of the body politic, as Justice Bhuyan so powerfully put it, depends on it.