Andhra High Court asks how local-body polls can run while SIR is still deleting voters

The Andhra Pradesh High Court on Tuesday, 1 September 2026, put a hard question to the election calendar: how can local-body polls be held while a special intensive revision of electoral rolls is still under way?

Justice V. Sujatha, also recorded as Vaddiboyina Sujata, was hearing a petition by YSR Congress Party general secretary Lella Appireddy, who asked that elections wait until the SIR is complete and final rolls are published. The judge observed that voters deleted during SIR can appeal, and that those appeals can change the final rolls. Holding polls on existing rolls, she said, could deprive people of voting rights. The YSRCP’s concerns, in that framing, were justified.

Senior counsel Subramanya Sriram told the Court that the Election Commission of India is expected to complete SIR by 3 October. The petitioner’s side sought polls either on final rolls or on rolls that incorporate changes until nominations close.

Advocate General Dammalapati Srinivas argued the other way: roll revision is a continuous process and does not prevent elections. A Supreme Court Constitution bench holding was cited before the Court — that elections can be held on rolls as they stand on the date of notification.

State Election Commission counsel Kanaparthi Ajay warned that accepting the demand could delay polls by five to six months. Material placed in the public filings also said the SEC notified ward-wise rolls by 3 September based on Assembly rolls, with 1 January as the qualifying date; ward-wise panchayat rolls were published on 15 April, urban rolls on 3 September, and corrections run till the last date of nominations.

Justice Sujatha directed the Registry to place the petition before the Chief Justice Lisa Gill bench, subject to the Chief Justice’s approval. The matter has been tagged with pending local-body public interest litigations, with the Chief Justice’s bench listed for 9 September.

What this cutting will not do is invent a Form B or a poll date. No notified local-body election date appears in the locked record. If a date has not been notified, it is not notified. The 1 September hearing is a judicial question about sequence — SIR first, or notification on existing rolls — not a calendar of wards.

The stakes are plain. Local-body elections decide village, mandal and municipal power for years. SIR deletions, if they stand without a finished appeal, can shrink a booth list overnight. If polls wait for final rolls, the SEC’s five-to-six-month delay warning becomes the Opposition’s opportunity and the ruling side’s headache. If polls go ahead on notification-date rolls, deleted voters may find the nomination window closed before their names return.

The Advocate General’s continuous-revision argument is the administrative default across India: rolls are never perfectly still. The petitioner’s argument is that this SIR is not a routine annual tweak; it is a special intensive revision expected to run to 3 October, and local polls on a moving list risk a hollow franchise.

Until the Chief Justice’s bench sits on 9 September, Andhra’s local-body calendar sits in that tension. This desk records the 1 September observations, the 3 October SIR horizon, the five-to-six-month delay warning, the 15 April / 3 September roll-publication notes, and the absence of a notified poll date. It does not write the election programme the Court has not been shown.