About six crore names have been removed from the electoral roll in the first year of the SIR. In Delhi, one in every three voters has been made to look like non-Indian, despite the assurance by the officials that system-generated notices were being issued to voters with discrepancies to correct their data and that no name can be deleted without giving the voter an opportunity to be heard and a proper speaking and appealable order. — DC Image

An election commissioner, a former deputy prime minister, a chief minister and a former chief minister and a mass of people who hold or have held responsible constitutional positions in the country and have voted in several elections in Delhi have now joined crores of other Indians across the country who have been asked to explain the reason why their names should not be deleted from the electoral rolls. This is a reflection of the callous and mechanical way the Election Commission of India (ECI) has gone about conducting the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls, striking at the roots of democracy and constitutional principles.

The EC has invented a new tool called ‘discrepancies’ (it was ‘logical discrepancies’ in West Bengal) to deny people their basic right as citizens of this country: the right to vote. The Supreme Court itself had once remarked that some of the ‘discrepancies’ the EC talks about, such as minor variations in the spellings in surnames or age differences between parents and children, are very normal and natural in Indian conditions. But the EC, out on creating an electoral roll on diet, would cut the names for reasons that are valid as well as ridiculous. It is on the EC to ensure that all names which belong to the category of absent, shifted, dead, and duplicate (ASDD) are removed from the voters’ lists but it has gone far beyond its brief in pruning the document.

About six crore names have been removed from the electoral roll in the first year of the SIR. In Delhi, one in every three voters has been made to look like non-Indian, despite the assurance by the officials that system-generated notices were being issued to voters with discrepancies to correct their data and that no name can be deleted without giving the voter an opportunity to be heard and a proper speaking and appealable order. “The (Election) Commission reiterates its firm commitment to a transparent, participative and inclusive revision process, ensuring that ‘no eligible citizen is left out while no ineligible person is included in the electoral roll’.” The principle and position behind the action sound reasonable and logical but the actions that followed the reiterations do not.

The name of a person gains an entry into the electoral roll following a prescription mandated by law. The EC can decline an application if the applicant does not satisfy the conditions. That is, every entry has been vetted through a process in which the EC and the applicant was a part. Hence it must be incumbent on the EC to explain why a person’s name should not be on the list, and not for the voter to explain why her name should be there. A contrarian view is undemocratic, but unfortunately, the EC has taken such a position.

Whether a chief minister gets to vote or not does matter; so do the cases with very ordinary people whose only stake in the process is that they are all citizens of this country. The country belongs to them and they belong to this country. The EC should not be allowed to play nasty games in that organic and natural bond. 

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