India, Oct. 4 -- Any exercise that leads to the disenfranchisement of millions of Indian citizens, making them "second class citizens in their own country" by denying them the right to vote, is "intrinsically arbitrary", Supreme Court judge Ujjal Bhuyan said on Sunday, delivering a scathing constitutional critique of mass voter exclusion amid the controversy over the Election Commission's special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.

"No amount of whataboutery can justify it," said Justice Bhuyan, warning that such a process would strike at the very heart of the Constitution and amount to "a negation of the constitutional order which we have adopted under the Constitution of India".

The Constitution, he underlined, does not envis...