Fourteen procedural deficiencies tied to how the petition was filed have been flagged by the Supreme Court registry, with the document in question challenging what the INDIA bloc describes as voter deletions and irregularities during the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. No scheduling order for a hearing on the petition has been issued.
Among the filing's procedural shortcomings are lawyer authorisation forms that are either absent or lack signatures, supporting documentation that lacks clarity, a poorly legible copy of Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge's identity card, and a court fee payment falling Rs 220 short of the required amount.
Formal objections to the vakalatnamas submitted on behalf of nine petitioners — Saugata Roy, Akhilesh Yadav, Tejashwi Prasad Yadav, Sanjay Raut, M A Baby, D Raja, Mahua Majhi, Supriya Sule, and E T Mohammed Basheer — have been placed on record by the registry. A vakalatnama is the instrument through which a petitioner formally grants their chosen lawyer the authority to act on their behalf in legal proceedings.
The registry has also raised questions about why individual Election Commissioners appear as private respondents in an Article 32 writ petition, and has asked for an explanation. Legible copies of the relevant paperwork have been sought by the registry, among them the Election Commission's ruling of 24 June 2025 to launch the SIR process along with associated materials tied to the removal of voters from the rolls. Digital copies of particular files were also requested, to be supplied on a portable storage drive.
A joint letter from Rahul Gandhi and ten fellow Opposition figures has called for electoral-roll deletions and modifications to be examined by an independent panel, led by a retired Supreme Court judge, within a defined timeframe. Those filing the petition are asking that the SIR process, currently under way across multiple states, be suspended while the Supreme Court examines the questions raised in their challenge.
The petitioners' position is that election authorities give any voter advance notification and a fair chance to contest removal from the rolls. Included among the demands is a polling-station-level account of voters who were removed from the rolls — detailing the reason behind each deletion and outlining a pathway through which anyone struck off in error could have their registration restored.
According to the petition, a draft electoral roll released in Punjab on 13 August 2026 put the voter count at roughly 20.66 lakh fewer names than the approximately 2.14 crore registered on the rolls as of June 2026. Requests for documentation and internal records tied to SIR decisions — among them access logs drawn from both the ECINET and ERONET systems — were also put forward by the leaders.
A formal request for review has been lodged, asking whether the Election Commission's conduct aligned with the requirements set out in constitutional and statutory law.
The petition arose after Chief Justice Surya Kant declined to convene a meeting with Rahul Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge. The Chief Justice explained that invoking a private meeting on live cases would put both the separation of powers and judicial propriety at risk, though the petitioners were assured their filing would be taken up as promptly as the law allows.
