THE MANNER IN WHICH THE ELECTION COMMISSION OF INDIA (‘ECI’) is conducting the Special Intensive Revision (‘SIR’) in Bihar — shifting the burden of proof of citizenship on people and asking them to fill forms and submit several documents including birth certificates of their parents — would lead to mass disenfranchisement. Such exclusionary process of preparing electoral rolls is contrary to the ideal of inclusion based on which voters’ lists were prepared right from the first general elections during 1951 and 1952 till January 2025. The worst victims would be women, Dalits, Muslims and impoverished people from villages who migrate in large numbers to different parts of India in search of livelihood opportunities. Never ever electoral rolls were revised with an intent to delete names of voters on such a large scale.
Deletion of voters
Additionally, the ECI has announced that names of 65 lakh voters have been deleted from the electoral roll of Bihar on the grounds of death, permanent migration or any other reason. It is rather strange that the ECI never made public the list of deleted voters, the booths in which they resided and how many of them died and how many migrated permanently.
It is heartening that by the time this article was being written, the Supreme Court while hearing a bunch of petitions challenging SIR in Bihar, mandated the ECI in its interim order that, among others, it must disclose names of those 65 lakh voters booth wise by stating their EPIC numbers, state reasons behind deletion of each voter, make available the easily accessible digital form of the list containing those names and widely publicise about it in newspapers, TVs and social media.
