New Delhi, May 27 -- The Supreme Court on Wednesday, May 27, gave its stamp of approval to the Election Commission of India's (ECI) Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls - a large-scale exercise to weed out ineligible, duplicate or ghost voters from voter lists - ruling that it was not only lawful but essential to ensuring free and fair elections.

A bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi delivered the ruling on a series of petitions that had challenged the ECI's decision last June to carry out the exercise, beginning with Bihar.

What the court said

The bench held that clean and accurate voter lists were as important to democracy as the act of voting itself, and that the Election Commi...