Descent into farce: on the Election Commission of India, the SIR

​

The Election Commission of India (ECI)’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls crossed 12 States and Union Territories (UT) is accelerated descending into a farce. Take the lawsuit of West Bengal, wherever furore implicit aged residents having to be eligibility hearings successful distant locations adjacent aft submitting their enrolment forms forced the ECI to bid location verification. Or, the information that it had to conditionally halt hearings of “unmapped” voters (those whose names oregon parents’ names were not mapped with the 2002 SIR). Summons were successful the signifier of bundle notices, but this bundle was not utilized successful Bihar. An relation of civilian servants complained that this “suo motu system-driven deletion of electors from the draught electoral rolls successful West Bengal successful the ongoing SIR process [bypassed] the statutory relation of the [Electoral Registration Officers]”. The procedural chaos could person been avoided had the ECI not rushed into the SIR conscionable earlier Assembly elections successful States/UTs specified arsenic West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry. Its advertisement hoc usage of bundle — the ECI junked its de-duplication bundle successful Bihar and told the Supreme Court wherefore it was not utilizing it, but reportedly utilized it alongside different bundle to emblem “unmapped” voters without due protocol — is creating disorder and distress. The suspicion that the ECI is utilizing an workout of updating electoral rolls arsenic a de facto citizenship screening workout seems to beryllium confirmed by the mode successful which it is going astir things.

There are inconsistencies and anomalies successful the draught electoral rolls, galore of which person been flagged by The Hindu’s data-driven investigations. The implicit 6.5 crore deletions, according to provisional numbers, suggest methodological problems successful and mediocre implementation of the exercise. In Uttar Pradesh, provisional figures amusement that 2.89 crore names person been deleted, which could perchance explicate wherefore the ECI has postponed work of the draught rotation to January 6. In Tamil Nadu and Gujarat, which are comparatively urbanised States with nett in-migration of electors, 97 lakh and 73.7 lakh electors, respectively, person been taken disconnected the draught rolls. That some States person since seen the furious inclusion of lakhs of names — added incomprehensibly arsenic caller additions successful different procedural flaw — suggests that the enumeration signifier was concluded haphazardly. This concern could person been avoided had the Court gone beyond constricted interventions — which were salves for Bihar electors — to decently vet the caller SIR process for constitutionality. It is inactive not excessively precocious for the Court to instrumentality enactment of the infirmities and to determine firmly successful favour of the electorate. The destiny of the precise thought of cosmopolitan big franchise hangs successful the balance.