The Supreme Court on Monday delivered a sharp rebuke to the Election Commission of India, clarifying that it had never approved the modified Form 6 currently being used in the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, directly contradicting a claim the poll body had made in writing just days earlier.

“Any modified Form 6 has not been approved by us,” Chief Justice of India Surya Kant said, cutting through what had become a quiet but consequential dispute over who actually signed off on changes to one of the most basic documents in India’s electoral machinery.

The clarification followed a press note the Election Commission issued on September 26, claiming the Supreme Court had upheld the declaration attached to the SIR version of Form 6.

“The declaration attached to Form 6 for SIR has been upheld by the Hon’ble Supreme Court,” ECI said. This claim turned out to be inaccurate, or not in the way the Commission framed it.

While the ECI confirmed that the original, unmodified Form 6 would continue to be used during “non-SIR” periods, it offered no explanation for why a separate version exists for the SIR exercise, or who inside the Commission actually authorised the change.

In a press note, ECI said the original Form 6 will be used in non-SIR periods, but it did not explain why this bifurcation is being introduced, why the change to Form 6 under SIR was made at all, or who approved it.

The modification itself traces back to the Supreme Court’s May 27 judgment on the Bihar SIR exercise, a ruling the Commission has repeatedly cited as its legal basis for the broader revision drive.

According to the Supreme Court, the ECI can exercise SIR, but it cannot extend its powers beyond the ambit of what is authorised under the law.

“Don’t even think about telling the court that the Supreme Court approved a modified version when it did not,” it added.

The Form 6 dispute is part of a broader, months-long legal battle over SIR’s legitimacy, with petitions challenging the exercise already pending from Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Kerala.

Also, senior advocates like Abhishek Singhvi are arguing before the bench that the Commission’s actions amount to legislative overreach.

“The Election Commission is in the garb of passing orders for regulating the conduct of elections, cannot take itself purely legislative activity which has been reserved, under the Constitution, only to Parliament and the state legislatures,” Singhvi told the bench.

The bench responded by noting it intended to “independently interpret this, dehors what the Commission has done,” a line that captures the Court’s growing wariness of taking the Commission’s representations about judicial approval at face value.

For now, the Supreme Court has not ordered the modified form withdrawn, nor has it stayed the ongoing SIR process over the discrepancy.

But a Chief Justice publicly contradicted an Election Commission press statement, questioning the ECI and Gyanesh Kumar regarding modified Form 6.

It leaves the Commission to answer a question it has so far avoided: if the Supreme Court didn’t approve the changed form, then who inside the Commission did, and on what authority.