No SIR, it’s not done

The way EC is revising electoral rolls will bury Indian democracy

Alok Tiwari

The Election Commission of India seems to be doubling down on its move to conduct Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls it started in Bihar. The revision has been challenged in the Supreme Court by a clutch of opposition parties and NGOs. Instead of waiting for the SC to take a position on the issue, which would be morally and legally the right thing to do, it has instead written to chief electoral officers of all states to start preparing for similar revision beginning next year. This by itself is a brazen disregard of the judiciary and points to unstated objectives of the exercise.

SIR has raised hackles on several counts. For one, it was started in Bihar, a state that is due to go to polls in November. Second, this time EC is asking anyone whose name does not appear in electoral rolls of 2003, when the last intensive revision was conducted, to produce one of the 11 specified documents such as passport, birth certificate, caste certificate, matriculation certificate, and government issued documents related to employment to prove their eligibility. Aadhaar card, ration card, and ironically the voter’s ID card issued by the EC itself are not acceptable.

EC has also brushed aside the apex court suggestion to include Aadhaar, ration, and voter ID cards saying they do not prove citizenship. But some of the documents it does accept also do not prove citizenship e.g. caste or matriculation certificate. The exercise has rightly earned the opprobrium of not just opposition parties but also of everyone concerned with the health of Indian democracy. Several former chief election commissioners have come out openly against the way EC is going about the revision. Ground reports from Bihar indicate large scale irregularities and lacunae in the process. Citizens are not being given acknowledgement slips of forms they submitted. A journalist who reported this ended up facing an FIR.

This is not the first time that intensive revision of voters’ list is being done. EC carries out the exercise periodically which is its right and mandate. What has changed this time is the philosophy of revision. In all such previous exercises, EC never asked for any document whatsoever. The enumerators visited the households and recorded the details of everybody living there as told by the head of the household. The person was required to attest that the information given was true to their knowledge. The process was based on trusting people, which is how it should be.

Even though only Indian citizens can vote, it is not EC’s mandate to verify citizenship. That is the job of the Union home ministry. It can start a process of confirmation if, and only if, someone challenges a person’s status as a citizen. Even then the burden of proof lies with the challenger and investigating agency, not the citizen. This has served the Indian democracy and election process well. There is no evidence that non-citizens have got themselves enrolled as voters in numbers large enough to affect the outcome of the elections. If it has happened anywhere then it is for the EC to produce the evidence before the nation and carry out verifications in that area and for those particular people. It cannot just one day wake up and tell the entire population it no longer trusts them to tell the truth. The purpose of the whole exercise appears to allow the officials and dubiously appointed volunteers to exclude voters at will.

It is obvious the disadvantaged sections— Dalits, tribals, minorities, and the poor—will bear the brunt of this. They are the ones least likely to be able to produce the documents needed and least able to challenge if excluded. This, as MP Manoj Jha says, appears to be an elite coup against the subalterns. If allowed to succeed it will effectively bury the Indian democracy. These very sections have time and again rescued Indian democracy from crises when the educated elite either erred grievously or simply abdicated.

Politically it may seem that the ruling alliance apprehends loss of support among these sections in coming Bihar elections. That would explain the indecent hurry. It could also be that ground is being prepared to undertake similar exercise in West Bengal that decisively rejected the ruling party in the last elections. It is there that BJP and other right-wing forces have raised the bogey of infiltrators. Opposition fears Bihar will be cited as precedent to weed out chunks of minority and poor voters elsewhere to alter the election outcomes.

Those who still think the EC—and the government behind it—is on the right track may well pause to consider. The monster they have created has returned to swallow them too. There was gleeful gloating in such sections when similar exercise began in Assam to prepare National Population Register. Kagaz Toh Dikhana Padega, was the refrain. This was aimed at the Muslims. It eventually led to establishment of detention centres for and large-scale displacement of Muslims in that state. Now, it is not just the minorities but everyone being asked to produce papers.

This is of a piece with measures that have continuously chipped away at the liberties of Indians in the last decade. Be it provisions in new penal code, the data protection bill, the information technology act, and the latest law in Maharashtra supposedly to address left wing extremism, the government has progressively armed itself with draconian powers while reducing the avenues of redressal for citizens. SIR takes that process to a frightening new level.

In a free country, government does not ask for papers from citizens, it does not build concentration camps for them, it does not deny them vote. In a democracy, citizens enjoy rights while state has duties. Fascist regimes take upon powers and deny citizens their rights and liberties. Let us not go down that route.