Form 6 row: How an ECI order reached Supreme Court | Timeline

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:

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.

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.

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.

One of the cases concerned Form 6.

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.

It added that during a non-SIR period, the forms prescribed under the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 would be used.

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.

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.”