​Band aid: On the Supreme Court and the Special Intensive Revision process

With the corrections and claims process coming to an end, the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process has seen the merchandise of last electoral rolls but successful West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh which are owed soon. The nett fig of voters removed (with caller additions) from the pre-SIR electoral rolls successful States specified arsenic Tamil Nadu (nearly 11.5%), Gujarat (13.4%) and Chhattisgarh (11.8%) stay high. Tamil Nadu and Gujarat are, aft all, nett in-migrant States dissimilar Bihar wherever deletions were astir 6%. The precocious fig of deletions, and the information that excisions are higher for pistillate than antheral electors, suggests that the SIR process, arsenic envisaged and implemented by the Election Commission of India (ECI), suffered from wide structural defects. A clear-cut appraisal could person lone been imaginable with examination with Census figures, but owed to the prolonged hold by the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Union Government, lone outdated numbers from 2011 are available. The last figures of the electorate successful large States wherever the SIR was conducted bespeak that the registered big colonisation successful the last rolls is overmuch beneath the projected estimates. This again raises the question of whether the ECI should person waited for the Census earlier rushing the SIR — but that is present lone of world interest.

The exercise’s lacunae and anomalies could person been mitigated if the Supreme Court of India had ruled connected SIR’s constitutionality and compelled the ECI to follow a much robust — though slower — household-by-household count, alternatively of depending connected an enumeration that shifts the load onto electors to beryllium their eligibility. This workout has clearly, and unduly, affected migrant voters — particularly those leaving their residence for the abbreviated word and joined women who person shifted residences. By letting the process to proceed contempt its frailties, the Court relied connected the ECI’s assertion that concerns with omissions are overblown, fixed the comparatively fewer complaints filed by governmental parties. But the information that governmental parties enactment successful a zero-sum crippled of contention should alert to the anticipation of their comparative deficiency of bureau successful assisting each electors to beryllium portion of the list. Also, dissimilar different individuality documents specified arsenic ration card, passport oregon Aadhaar, the elector individuality paper is of usage lone during quinquennial elections, disincentivising citizens from trying to guarantee that they are connected the list. This is adjacent much truthful successful West Bengal, wherever the ECI’s shoddy implementation has created specified a humongous messiness that the Court has sought the services of not conscionable the State’s judicial officers but those of its neighbours to assistance successful the “legal verification” process. The Court is seeking to easiness the wounded alternatively than assistance the process of cosmopolitan big franchise.