Bombay HC Petition, Rahul Gandhi’s Vote Chori Charge Converge on Maharashtra SIR

Bombay HC petition, political criticism and a civil-society representation are separately questioning aspects of Maharashtra’s SIR exercise.

What Happened

A petition titled Sagar Gawai v. Election Commission of India & Ors. has been filed before the Bombay High Court challenging the manner in which the Election Commission of India’s Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls is being conducted in Maharashtra. The petition was filed by Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) Youth President Sagar Ramesh Gawai and another petitioner through Advocates Hemant Ghadigaonkar, Sandesh V More and Hitendra Gandhi.

The petitioners say they are not seeking to stop or delay the election schedule. Their stated concern is enforcement of statutory safeguards under the Representation of the People Act, 1950. Among the allegations are that Booth Level Officers demanded documents during enumeration despite the ECI’s stated instructions, and that voters could be provisionally classified as absent, shifted, dead or duplicate without the procedural safeguards the petitioners say are required before an electoral entry is actually removed.

The court petition is one of three separate developments now drawing attention to the same SIR exercise. Separately, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi has described the Maharashtra exercise as “vote theft” and referred to the Election Commission as the “Vote Chori Aayog”. His comments followed the publication of Maharashtra’s SIR figures showing around 2.07 crore electors in the “Uncollectable Enumeration Form” category.

Gandhi also pointed to voter-count changes between the 2024 Lok Sabha and Maharashtra Assembly elections and cited a reported 91% reinstatement rate in appeals arising from the West Bengal SIR. Those are political claims and comparisons advanced by Gandhi and Congress, rather than findings in the Bombay High Court proceedings.

The Election Commission and Maharashtra election authorities have maintained an important distinction: being classified as “uncollectable” does not itself mean that an elector has been permanently deleted from the electoral roll. The draft stage is followed by claims, objections and verification before the final roll is prepared.

A third track has come from civil society. Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), Vote for Democracy (VFD) and the Bombay Catholic Sabha wrote to Maharashtra’s Chief Electoral Officer after 3,404 original SIR Enumeration Forms were found at a private photocopying centre in Kharghar. The organisations sought an inquiry into how the forms came to be outside official custody and whether voter information had been reproduced or otherwise accessed.

The Kharghar episode is independently reported to have led to the suspension of five Booth Level Officers and an inquiry, with an FIR also reported in connection with the possession and reproduction of the forms. The specific civil-society demand discussed here is based principally on the organisations’ own representation and should therefore be understood as their account and request for investigation, rather than as a final finding of wrongdoing.

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Background & Context

Maharashtra entered the SIR exercise with about 9.78 crore electors. According to data released by the Chief Electoral Officer, 7.71 crore, or 78.85%, submitted filled and signed Enumeration Forms during the house-to-house phase. Around 2.07 crore were consequently placed in the “Uncollectable EF” category.

The classification covers different situations. Reporting based on the election authorities’ data has identified categories including voters who were absent or could not be traced, permanently shifted electors, deceased electors and duplicate entries. The authorities have stressed that the category is not synonymous with permanent deletion.

The petition before the Bombay High Court focuses on what happens procedurally when such issues arise. According to the petition, a missed home visit, an inability to trace a legacy-roll entry or a provisional classification should not automatically result in exclusion without the concerned elector receiving the process contemplated by law.

The petition also invokes the Supreme Court’s 2026 decision in Association for Democratic Reforms v. Election Commission of India. That judgment considered the statutory framework governing SIR and discussed the importance of notice and an opportunity to be heard before an existing electoral entry is deleted. The Court held that the SIR framework before it did not dispense with those safeguards.

This distinction is important because the legal question raised by the Bombay petition is narrower than the political language surrounding the SIR. Whether a particular elector has been wrongly excluded, whether an officer followed the prescribed procedure, and whether the statutory safeguards were respected are questions capable of judicial examination independently of claims about political motive.

Key Details

• Court/Forum: Bombay High Court.
• Case: Sagar Gawai v. Election Commission of India & Ors.
• Petitioners: Sagar Ramesh Gawai, VBA Youth President, and another individual.
• Reported date: September 24, 2026.
• Current status: Petition pending; no hearing date has been confirmed in the available reporting.
• Legal framework cited: Representation of the People Act, 1950, along with the Supreme Court’s decision in Association for Democratic Reforms.
• ECI issue: Around 2.07 crore Maharashtra electors were placed in the “Uncollectable Enumeration Form” category at the draft stage; authorities say this does not by itself establish permanent deletion.

What the Bombay HC petition alleges

According to the petition, Booth Level Officers were allegedly demanding documents from citizens during enumeration despite clause 2(d) of the ECI’s instructions, which the petitioners say prohibits such document collection at that stage.

The petition further challenges the treatment of voters provisionally marked absent, shifted, dead or duplicate. It argues that a missed home visit or an untraceable legacy-roll entry cannot automatically become a basis for exclusion without a formal hearing and a speaking order from the Electoral Registration Officer.

The petition also raises a question concerning citizenship. Its position is that electoral officers cannot conclusively determine citizenship on their own and that unresolved doubts should be referred to the appropriate central government authority. This remains a contention advanced by the petitioners and has not been judicially determined in this proceeding.

Why It Matters

The Maharashtra SIR debate is now being examined through three different institutional channels.

The first is judicial. The Gawai petition places specific procedural allegations before the Bombay High Court and asks whether the statutory protections governing electoral-roll revision are being followed.

The second is political. Rahul Gandhi and other Congress leaders have used the 2.07 crore figure to renew their broader criticism of the Election Commission and their earlier allegations concerning Maharashtra’s electoral rolls. Gandhi’s “vote theft” characterization remains his political claim, not an established finding of the court or the Election Commission.

The third is civil-society scrutiny. CJP, VFD and BCS have approached the Maharashtra Chief Electoral Officer over the Kharghar forms incident and asked for an investigation into document custody and security. Their representation adds a separate question about the handling of voter information during the revision process.

For law students, the more useful legal question is therefore not whether the political rhetoric surrounding SIR is correct. It is how the statutory safeguards operate when an electoral authority proposes to alter or exclude an existing entry.

That brings the focus back to procedural fairness: notice, an opportunity to respond, consideration by the competent electoral authority and a reasoned decision where the law requires one. The large number of “uncollectable” entries provides the factual context, but the legal validity of any particular exclusion depends on the procedure followed in that case.

The Supreme Court’s treatment of SIR has already recognised both the Election Commission’s statutory and constitutional role in maintaining electoral rolls and the importance of safeguards governing deletion. The Bombay High Court petition now raises questions about how those principles operate in the specific circumstances alleged in Maharashtra.

Closing

Maharashtra’s SIR is therefore being questioned on three separate fronts: a pending court petition alleging procedural violations, political criticism centred on the scale of the draft-stage exclusions, and a civil-society request for an inquiry into the handling of voter forms.

These developments overlap in subject matter but should not be treated as proof of a single underlying violation. The Bombay High Court has yet to adjudicate the Gawai petition, Rahul Gandhi’s “vote chori” allegation remains a political claim, and the Kharghar document-handling episode remains subject to investigation and competing accounts.

What ultimately matters in the legal proceedings is whether the electoral-roll revision machinery has complied with the statutory procedure applicable to individual exclusions and whether affected electors receive the safeguards available to them.