Supreme Court tells the Election Commission it never approved a modified Form 6

The Supreme Court on Monday refused to suspend Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and said, in open court, that it had not approved any modified Form 6. Chief Justice Surya Kant, sitting with Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V. Mohana, issued notices to the Election Commission, the Centre, Kumar, and the other two commissioners, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi. The bench said the commission is expected to take unanimous decisions, and that any decision not in accordance with law would be annulled.

Form 6 is the statutory application for a first entry on the electoral roll. The dispute is about an online version used in the special intensive revision, the SIR. The Election Commission said last week that the old Form 6 would be used in non-SIR periods, and that changes made for the revision had been upheld by the Supreme Court. Kant's line on Monday was the opposite of that claim. Modified Form 6, he said, had not been approved by the court. When the record was produced, the bench would want to see who had modified it.

The 14 decisions

The court was hearing two petitions. They allege that 14 decisions on the SIR were taken in the name of the commission despite objections recorded by Sandhu and Joshi between October 2025 and August 2026. The legal point is collegial. The commission has three members. Petitioners say Kumar acted alone on a list of revision orders. The bench did not decide that question. It asked for replies and declined an interim order that would have removed the chief election commissioner while the case runs.

The timing of the form change is part of the record petitioners want examined. The Wire has reported that the online Form 6 began requiring applicants to map their parents' details to the previous SIR, and blocked those who could not, only in July. The Supreme Court judgment the commission has cited is from May. A July change cannot have been approved by a May judgment. That gap is what Kant's sentence points at. The commission can still argue that the May ruling covered the substance of the revision. It cannot now say the court signed the modified form.

What happens to a voter this week

The notices do not freeze the SIR. Booth-level work continues until the court says otherwise. An applicant who cannot map a parent to the previous roll still faces the online block, if that block remains on the form. The court's next look will be at the record of who changed the form and at the 14 decisions said to have been taken over the objections of two commissioners. Annulment, if it comes, would be decision by decision. Kant said the court would examine all of them.

Opposition parties have asked Kumar to resign and have planned a march to the commission's office, accusing him of helping the ruling party on the rolls. The court did not adopt that language. It refused suspension, issued notice, and separated itself from the modified form. The usable fact for anyone filling a Form 6 is the chief justice's sentence: the version now online was not approved by the Supreme Court.

The commission's defence, and the gap in it

The Election Commission has said the older Form 6 remains the form outside an SIR, and that the revision version was built to match a judgment. Monday's hearing does not repeal that distinction. It rejects the claim that the court approved the modified file. The next filing from the commission will have to show either a judicial order that names the new fields, or an internal note of who added the parent-mapping step in July. Sandhu and Joshi are on the notice list because the petitions say their objections were recorded and overridden. Their replies, if they file them separately from the commission's, are the documents that would show whether the 14 decisions were unanimous.

Until those replies arrive, the roll revision continues under a form the chief justice has disowned. That is a narrower holding than the opposition's demand for Kumar's removal. It is also more immediate for a first-time applicant. The form in front of them is the one the court said it did not approve.