NEW DELHI — Defending its decision to strike 3.66 lakh citizens from the final electoral rolls in Bihar ahead of the Assembly elections, the electoral oversight body assured the Supreme Court on Tuesday that the most effective way to safeguard the democratic process is to carefully curate who is allowed to participate in it.

The mass deletions, part of a "Special Intensive Revision" that initially flagged 65 lakh people for removal from draft rolls, were conducted to maintain the "purity of the election." Responding to petitioners who characterized the drive as a presumptive exclusion disproportionately targeting minorities and women, representatives asserted the commission's exclusive constitutional jurisdiction to decide which demographics require purification.

"Our mandate is simply to weed out ineligible persons to maintain a spotless voter base," an official said, clarifying that while citizens may hold Aadhaar and voter identification cards, those documents alone do not conclusively prove they are the exact sort of citizens the system has in mind.

The commission confirmed that the second phase of the revision exercise is already underway in nine other states and three Union Territories, noting that with enough intensive oversight, future elections could potentially be run without the messy unpredictability of voters entirely.