Supreme Court scrutiny exposes Form 6 digital dispute
The Supreme Court’s clarification that it never approved a modified Form 6 has sharpened scrutiny of whether the Election Commission of India turned a separate Special Intensive Revision declaration into a compulsory step in online voter registration without formally changing the statutory form.
A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Surya Kant said on October 5 that no modified Form 6 had received the court’s approval and indicated it would examine the record to determine who authorised the changes. The bench, also comprising Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana, issued notices while hearing petitions challenging decisions attributed to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and the functioning of the three-member Commission.
The distinction is legally significant. Its position is that Form 6 itself was never amended. Officials say an additional declaration was attached for the SIR, an exercise whose legality and special documentation framework were upheld by the Supreme Court on May 27.
The May judgment, however, dealt with the Bihar SIR framework established in June 2025. Under that arrangement, a new applicant submitted statutory Form 6 along with a separate Annexure D. The court recognised that an intensive revision may require documentation beyond the ordinary revision process and held that the Commission retained authority to devise an appropriate documentation framework for an SIR.
The present controversy concerns what happened later on ECINET, the Commission’s digital voter-services platform. From July, the online registration process required applicants in SIR areas to supply information connecting themselves, their parents or grandparents with an earlier intensive-revision roll. That included electoral-roll particulars such as polling station and serial numbers.
The legal question is therefore broader than whether the printed statutory Form 6 was physically rewritten. Petitioners contend that incorporating the additional declaration into the online workflow effectively changed the conditions for submitting Form 6, even if the underlying PDF remained untouched.
That argument gains significance from Rule 13 of the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, which provides that every claim for inclusion as a new elector shall be made in Form 6. The prescribed form sits within the statutory rules. A formal alteration to it would ordinarily require amendment through the prescribed legal process.
ECI’s own portal illustrates the distinction. It lists “Fill Form 6” and “Fill Declaration Form” separately for new voter registration in the SIR framework. Its guidance also recognises offline submission of Form 6 to electoral registration officials, while the disputed digital arrangement made completion of the additional information part of the path to online submission.
This creates the issue the court may now have to resolve: whether authority to demand additional documentation during an SIR also permits the Commission to configure its technology so that a supplementary declaration becomes, in practice, a condition for electronically lodging the statutory application.
The ECI maintains that the declaration was a separate SIR requirement and says the Bihar SIR order, including the accompanying declaration mechanism, had unanimous Commission approval. It has also maintained that later SIR orders were approved unanimously, rejecting suggestions that Kumar acted alone.
That defence does not settle the narrower digital question. The declaration that appeared in the online registration process in July 2026 came after the May judgment. The Supreme Court’s latest observation makes clear that its earlier ruling should not be read as approval of any subsequent modification of Form 6.
The Commission had already moved to limit the disputed requirement before the latest hearing. Following a September 26 meeting of Kumar and Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, it said the declaration would apply during the SIR phase, while ordinary periods would use forms prescribed under the 1960 Rules. The extra declaration was subsequently removed from ECINET in states and Union Territories where SIR had concluded.
A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Surya Kant said on October 5 that no modified Form 6 had received the court’s approval and indicated it would examine the record to determine who authorised the changes. The bench, also comprising Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana, issued notices while hearing petitions challenging decisions attributed to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and the functioning of the three-member Commission.
The distinction is legally significant. Its position is that Form 6 itself was never amended. Officials say an additional declaration was attached for the SIR, an exercise whose legality and special documentation framework were upheld by the Supreme Court on May 27.
The May judgment, however, dealt with the Bihar SIR framework established in June 2025. Under that arrangement, a new applicant submitted statutory Form 6 along with a separate Annexure D. The court recognised that an intensive revision may require documentation beyond the ordinary revision process and held that the Commission retained authority to devise an appropriate documentation framework for an SIR.
The present controversy concerns what happened later on ECINET, the Commission’s digital voter-services platform. From July, the online registration process required applicants in SIR areas to supply information connecting themselves, their parents or grandparents with an earlier intensive-revision roll. That included electoral-roll particulars such as polling station and serial numbers.
The legal question is therefore broader than whether the printed statutory Form 6 was physically rewritten. Petitioners contend that incorporating the additional declaration into the online workflow effectively changed the conditions for submitting Form 6, even if the underlying PDF remained untouched.
That argument gains significance from Rule 13 of the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, which provides that every claim for inclusion as a new elector shall be made in Form 6. The prescribed form sits within the statutory rules. A formal alteration to it would ordinarily require amendment through the prescribed legal process.
ECI’s own portal illustrates the distinction. It lists “Fill Form 6” and “Fill Declaration Form” separately for new voter registration in the SIR framework. Its guidance also recognises offline submission of Form 6 to electoral registration officials, while the disputed digital arrangement made completion of the additional information part of the path to online submission.
This creates the issue the court may now have to resolve: whether authority to demand additional documentation during an SIR also permits the Commission to configure its technology so that a supplementary declaration becomes, in practice, a condition for electronically lodging the statutory application.
The ECI maintains that the declaration was a separate SIR requirement and says the Bihar SIR order, including the accompanying declaration mechanism, had unanimous Commission approval. It has also maintained that later SIR orders were approved unanimously, rejecting suggestions that Kumar acted alone.
That defence does not settle the narrower digital question. The declaration that appeared in the online registration process in July 2026 came after the May judgment. The Supreme Court’s latest observation makes clear that its earlier ruling should not be read as approval of any subsequent modification of Form 6.
The Commission had already moved to limit the disputed requirement before the latest hearing. Following a September 26 meeting of Kumar and Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, it said the declaration would apply during the SIR phase, while ordinary periods would use forms prescribed under the 1960 Rules. The extra declaration was subsequently removed from ECINET in states and Union Territories where SIR had concluded.