6 months ago
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On the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) Special Intensive Revision (SIR) 2.0 successful 12 States and UTs, The Hindu editorial said, “The acquisition successful Bihar suggests that the process... could hazard the disenfranchisement of a important fig of people… As this workout unfolds, it is incumbent upon civilian society, the media and parties to presume a relation of aggravated vigilance lest this affects the integrity of India’s electoral democracy.”
The Bihar exercise
Bihar has conscionable undergone a SIR of its electoral roll. The documentation-heavy process, which sought to re-verify the elector eligibility of residents, triggered wide interest implicit wide disenfranchisement and the stealth operationalisation of a citizenship screening regime. The ‘revised electoral rolls’ person respective superior flaws including a crisp diminution successful the adult-elector ratio, disproportionate deletions of women and Muslim voters, and duplicate names and bogus entries. Disenfranchisement, arsenic feared, has already taken place.
The ECI’s behaviour passim the Bihar SIR has raised troubling questions astir its impartiality and organization integrity. Its tribunal filings and nationalist statements uncover that the instauration appears to person go progressively unresponsive to scrutiny and resistant to accountability and much acrophobic with defending its ain authorization than ensuring genuine inclusivity and integrity of the electoral roll.
The Supreme Court, which has been monitoring the legality of the exercise, has refused to code the halfway question of legality — the ECI’s powers to behaviour an SIR and beingness of immoderate Rules thereof — and has allowed the workout to proceed unchecked. Its interventions mitigated immoderate procedural inequities but failed to forestall their consolidation. By failing to guarantee meaningful corrective action, the Court risks legitimising an unwarranted model that has produced far-reaching and discriminatory outcomes for number and marginalised sections.
Furthermore, determination is an contented of voting rights for interior migrants which is peculiarly superior successful Tamil Nadu. Section 19 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, requires that a idiosyncratic is ‘ordinarily resident’ successful a constituency for inclusion successful its electoral roll. Section 20 provides the meaning of the word ‘ordinarily resident’. It is archaic and does not code the 3 chiseled categories of present-day migrants: semipermanent oregon semi-permanent migrants — those who relocate for a longer period, often for acquisition oregon imperishable employment; short-term/seasonal migrants — those who determination for a circumstantial period, typically for enactment during a peculiar season; circular migrants — those who determination backmost and distant betwixt their location and enactment destination.
Participatory democracy
The existent SIR is bereft of due Rules, oversight, scrutiny oregon audit. This brings retired the lawsuit for a mandatory societal audit for electoral rotation revision and verification. Social audits successful India are an institutionalised process of participatory ideology by which individuals and communities are empowered to “audit” immoderate enactment oregon work carried retired for their payment oregon successful their name. This would truthful impact the nationalist auditing of the full rhythm of an enactment by the radical themselves.
The Constitution nether Article 243A and 243J empowers specified monitoring and audit. Social audit has go an institutionalised mechanics mandated by law. The Comptroller and Auditor General of India has besides approved societal audits arsenic indispensable for cosmopolitan monitoring of immoderate mass-based programme and has laid down processes and procedures these.
India’s electoral strategy is anchored connected cosmopolitan big franchise. This is lone ensured erstwhile each eligible elector finds their sanction connected the electoral roll. The existent SIR has nary checks and balances and is susceptible to outer influences and interferences. Besides, successful a state wherever 30% to 40% of registered voters don’t adjacent crook up to vote, to expect the full voting colonisation to really use and reapply to beryllium connected the voting database is unfair and impractical. To inquire them to nutrient caller impervious of citizenship done copies of documents named is an abdication of work by the ECI to hole the rolls and marque close additions and deletions. This is simply a task champion carried retired with the engagement of the radical done an unfastened and mandatory societal audit process.
Social audit is an open, idiosyncratic and corporate exertion of caput of the people, utilizing existing basal documents and records, and providing testimonies to corroborate the records oregon question the accusation they contain. The panchayat/ward/booth-level societal audits are the champion imaginable intensive revision of electoral rolls that volition guarantee the slightest imaginable manipulation and the top imaginable inclusion for cosmopolitan big franchise successful India.
Such a societal audit process was tested and enactment to usage by the ECI and citizens’ groups successful 2003 erstwhile J.M. Lyngdoh was the Chief Election Commissioner. Based connected the suggestions from citizens’ groups, the ECI had ordered that decentralised societal audits beryllium carried retired successful each gram sabha and/or ward sabha of the 5 States that were going to the polls aboriginal that year. The existing electoral rolls, arsenic updated by the booth-level officer, were utilized arsenic a base. In Rajasthan alone, implicit 7 lakh changes were made arsenic a effect (or consequence) of this process. So, determination is precedence.
The ECI would beryllium good advised to travel this way and laic down Rules including mandatory societal audit successful consultation with civilian nine and governmental parties earlier proceeding further with SIR 2.0. This is simply a indispensable to safeguard the integrity of electoral democracy.
M.G. Devasahayam, erstwhile Indian Administrative Service serviceman and presently Coordinator, Citizens Commission connected Elections
