Purifying Voter Lists or Purging the Poor? EC Must Pause and Reflect
- Sathish Tarnas
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures” — The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948.
It is this universal suffrage that grants voting rights to all adult citizens, irrespective of their caste, creed or community. In India, it came into existence along with its Constitution in January 1950. Thus, when it is about the ‘right to vote’, India—the world’s largest democracy–is a pioneer.
This ‘right to vote’ of citizens is the cornerstone of our parliamentary democracy —a system built upon the principle of popular sovereignty. The framework governing this right is not a singular decree but a complex and layered architecture of constitutional mandates, statutory laws and administrative regulations. This structure defines who is an elector, establishes the machinery for their registration, and delineates the powers of the institutions responsible for safeguarding the integrity of the electoral process. Understanding this architecture and adhering to it is fundamental to creating, validating and accessing the electoral rolls, which form the core of every election. These duties and responsibilities are vested in the Election Commission (EC) under Article 324 of the Constitution of India.
From the way the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls is being carried out in Bihar, it appears as if the EC has not understood this architecture. What has been launched is an assault on this framework, with a purported attempt to ‘purify’ and sanitise the electoral rolls. This is likely to end up disenfranchising a large segment of the voting population—particularly the poor and the marginalised—who possess little or no official documentation as proof of their citizenship.
Since the first general election in 1952, the vast majority of the poor and disadvantaged have held the ‘right to vote’ as their most fundamental stake in Indian democracy. Throughout, the principle followed has been that unless anyone disputes their status, they are presumed to be citizens and, therefore, efforts should be made to ensure that everyone is included as a voter.
The Bihar SIR, which is planned to be carried out across the country in due course, is claimed to be an exercise in pursuit of the responsibility entrusted to the EC under the Constitution. Yet what it is effectively doing is to invert precept and practice to:
• pass the burden of proving citizenship to the voter;
• arrogate to itself the authority to effectively confer or revoke citizenship rights without any mandate to do so;
• creep in the ‘communal’ idea of the National Register of Citizens through the back door;
• effectively negate and nullify the electoral rolls currently in use;
• disenfranchise millions of those who have been registered voters in all elections held since 2003 under the pretext of cleaning and purifying voter lists;
• give extraordinary discretionary powers to bureaucrats at various levels to indulge in rent-seeking to remove or add voters;
• muddy the waters sufficiently to make the entire process mystifying, difficult and opaque.
Added to these is the tearing hurry with which the exercise is being implemented just before the impending Assembly election, the impossible timelines given to election officials, and the grossly inadequate infrastructure available to digitise the data. Therefore, despite tall claims, the electoral rolls emerging from the Bihar SIR would have neither inclusion nor integrity — the twin goals set by the EC for this enormous exercise.
The publication of ‘draft SIR electoral rolls’ has only confirmed the worst fears about disenfranchisement. In the circumstances, the EC should halt the process forthwith and initiate a series of legislative, procedural and administrative measures to streamline the system before venturing further in Bihar and the rest of India:
• Define ‘Intensive Revision’: The Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, should be amended to provide a clear, statutory definition of an ‘intensive revision’ and specify the conditions under which such a revision can be initiated, its precise scope, the minimum timeline for its completion, and the principles of natural justice that must be followed—thereby preventing its arbitrary or rushed application.
• Standardise documentation for citizenship verification: Through an amendment of the relevant Act/Rules, a clear, limited and realistic set of documents that can be used for verifying citizenship for electoral purposes should be specified in consultation with all stakeholders.
• Leverage technology for de-duplication and deletion: The EC should accelerate the integration of the electoral roll database with official, digitised civil registration databases, particularly the Registrar General of India’s death registers.
• Create special provisions for vulnerable groups: The EC should adopt a more flexible definition of ‘ordinarily resident’ for migrant workers, allowing them to choose their place of registration, and establish simplified verification protocols for homeless citizens, nomadic communities, and transgender persons who may lack conventional address documentation.
What is more, voters — being the primary stakeholders in the election process — should have oversight of the electoral rolls. This can be done by conducting a ‘social audit’ through ward sabha and gram sabha platforms so that corrections can be made based on ground realities.
Citizens’ ‘right to vote’ is precious, and the EC should handle it with care — instead of adopting a ‘bull in a China shop’ approach.
(The author is a former IAS; presently coordinator, Citizens’ Commission on Elections)
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