​Letter against the spirit: on the Election Commission, barring foreigners

The Election Commission of India (ECI) has told the Supreme Court of India that it has a law work to guarantee that lone citizens are enrolled arsenic voters, and that nary foreigner makes it to the electoral rolls. Even a azygous foreigner cannot beryllium allowed to beryllium connected the elector list, the ECI argued earlier the Court connected January 6. The ECI is defending its ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, which has struck disconnected millions of names of voters. The concerns raised by each Opposition parties, ineligible scholars and civilian nine subordinate to the evident load and harassment being caused to mean citizens of the republic successful having to beryllium their beingness and identity. Nobody has argued for the inclusion of immoderate foreigner, oregon for keeping electoral rolls arsenic they are contiguous — faulty and intolerable to navigate. At the bosom of this statement is the narration betwixt the ECI’s claims and the process. Over galore decades, the ECI has consistently grown its organization integrity — contempt occasional slippages — by expanding the franchise not simply arsenic a formality but besides arsenic a substantive right. The maxim that nary magnitude of escaped criminals justifies the punishment of a azygous guiltless idiosyncratic has resonance successful this context. In a leap into the phantom satellite of foreigners taking implicit the country, the existent challenges to the integrity of India’s electoral process are being overlooked. Or, maybe, the foreigner paranoia is being whipped up arsenic a facade for polarisation.

That Article 324 of the Constitution grants the ECI autarkic “control implicit the mentation of electoral rolls” is not contested. The interest is that the ECI is not acting independently and successful a mode that boosts assurance successful the electoral process. The litmus trial of an electoral process — precise overmuch similar a judicial process — is whether the broadside that loses inactive trusts the process. Unfortunately for India, the existent ECI has its priorities turned connected their caput erstwhile it frames its law work arsenic the removal of foreigners, and not the enrolment of each Indian citizen. While respective authorities person a work to look for foreigners, lone the ECI has the work to enrol Indian citizens arsenic voters. Through changes successful rules and their partisan application, the ECI has undermined its ain stature and the ineffable work assigned to it by the Constitution successful the caller past. Now, by unleashing avoidable suffering and inconvenience upon Indian citizens nether the garb of chasing the past foreigner, it is misreading the missive and ignoring the tone of its law duty.