'Not after 15 or 20 years...': SC advocate Ashwini Upadhyay presses for SIR across India at regular intervals

Ashwini Upadhyay, senior advocate at the Supreme Court and one of the petitioners on the Bihar special intensive revision (SIR) row, on Friday, said that he wants the SIR exercise to be conducted across India at regular intervals. His comments come after the Supreme Court clarified that Aadhaar is a proof of identity but not of citizenship, domicile, or age. 

"My PIL is going on in the Supreme Court. SIR should be conducted in the entire country. It should not happen after 15 years or 20 years; it should happen every 5 years. It should be done at regular intervals," Upadhyay said at the India Today Mumbai Conclave 2025. 

He further said that three things are necessary to be a voter in India: you must be a citizen of India, you must be 18 years of age, and you must reside in the area from where you want to get your name added to the voter list.

Showing a copy of the Aadhaar card's post-2023 format, he said that he is confident the Supreme Court will scrap its order, which considered Aadhaar as the 12th document. 

"Aadhaar is neither a proof of citizenship nor a proof of residence and/or age. So, this poor Aadhaar is saying that I am not a domicile proof, I am not a residence proof, I am not a proof of citizenship, I am not a proof of age. It is clearly written on it," he explained. 

Furthermore, he said, "I have full confidence. I have 110% confidence. In the final hearing on October 7, I can say that the Supreme Court's order was wrong, in which Aadhaar was considered the 12th document. The Supreme Court will recall its order."

Meanwhile, political activist and Swaraj India founder Yogendra Yadav said that the voter rolls are defective and the Election Commission needs to work on improving their quality. 

Equating the SIR exercise to the demonetisation of ₹500 and ₹1,000 notes that took place in 2016, the Swaraj India founder said: "However, this special intensive revision is just like demonetisation, a medicine in search of a disease, a medicine that proves worse than the disease itself because it is not voter list revision."

He claimed that out of 7.24 crore people in Bihar, only 987 objections related to foreigners were filed, with the BJP filing none. 

Calling the exercise a "master manipulative reset", he noted, "Please remember, it is not a revision of Bihar's voters' list. It is a reset of the rules by which voting rights are to be given, and three fundamental changes have been made which have never happened in the history of this country in the last 75 years." 

The three changes, as listed by Yadav, were that the onus of being on the voters' list has been shifted from the State to the voter; every elector is being asked to produce documents with the presumption of "I don't know whether you are an Indian citizen or not"; and the 12 documents that the EC used to accept in the past for special services have suddenly been replaced by 11 documents which have lower evidentiary value.