By Sushil Kutty
Election officials have been on the SIR job for months, the entire 2024, in fact, and into 2025. The ‘job’ included deleting the names from the voters’ list of people who had passed away. This could be done only when informed by a close relative. What about when the close relative himself is asked to prove he’s still among the “alive and kicking”?
Reports of such curious happenings abound, if only the Election Commission would come clean. The election panel hasn’t been forthcoming. The designated booth-level officer should be doing his job. Unfortunately, he has been a laggard, perhaps deliberately so, asking a voter to prove with documentary evidence that she exists and has been residing at a particular Bihar address and, therefore, eligible to vote in the upcoming Bihar assembly polls.
The argument is that there are hundreds of thousands of such residents in Bihar who risk facing not being able to vote in the upcoming Bihar assembly elections and can’t do anything about it except make a ruckus at the polling booth. People who had voted regularly in assembly and Lok Sabha elections told to get hold of “documentary evidence” is a fraud played on voters.
Not producing documentary evidence is tantamount to being declared “illegal aliens” and in case the individual is a Bengali-speaker living in Bihar or Delhi, Mumbai or Uttar Pradesh, then he/she is automatically labelled “Bangladeshi” and a “ghuspetiya”. A “termite” is another moniker that readily comes to mind for such people. In law, people of doubtful citizenship are persona non grata.
The sudden decision of the Election Commission of India to totally revamp Bihar’s electoral rolls, what it calls Special Intensive Revision (SIR), has left a similar effect. Millions of voters have been asked to prove their citizenship, identity and normal place of residence.
Of course, with the holy grail, “documentary evidence” to even think of having the right to vote. Those who enrolled to vote before 2003 face a particularly harsh reality. The ECI’s decision was a shock. At least one report says Bihar government officials have been regularly updating the electoral rolls and had completed the SIR and the Bihar Chief Electoral Officer has the electronic records.
Those contesting the ECI contention that Bihar’s electoral records need a full revamp and are deliberately barking up the wrong tree. The ECI had no problems in accepting the validity of the existing electoral roll for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and used the existing electoral roll to update the records.
But nobody is willing to come on record. But that doesn’t mean people aren’t talking off the record. They’ve been talking convincingly, too. About the ECI’s exercise, which allegedly discriminated against voters who enrolled before 2003 and those after 2003.
The ECI has been asking voters who registered after 2003 to produce documentary evidence, implicating a large number of voters as frauds, for decades. And along with the “frauds” a whole host of ECI officials who abetted the fraud. Is this a true hypothesis? Has the entire Bihar cadre of ECI officials, election after election, been a gang of frauds?
Now, on the eve of another assembly election, Bihar’s electoral roll is being prepared afresh in the name of sanitising and maintaining a clean electoral roll but actually to use ECI’s powers to use any means to allegedly take away the rights of certain categories of people to vote in the assembly elections, questioning their citizenship, no less! But the ECI has not proved beyond doubt that there have been statewide anomalies for a fresh revision. The 30-day exercise of revising electoral rolls is still on and the ECI still swears that everything regarding the exercise is above board and the exercise will be done countrywide.
The ‘Special Intensive Revision (SIR)’, currently still on in Bihar, will be extended to “all of India”. Under SIR voters registered up to 2003 have to provide evidence that they were in the 2003 rolls. Two, voters above 40, who did not figure in the 2003 electoral roll have to provide documentary evidence of citizenship, identity and residence..The SIR expected to start in Bengal next week. The ruling TMC as also the Left and the Congress are opposing the ECI move. A big political turmoil is likely in Bengal as the TMC may prevent the revision work.
Three, voters in the age-group 21-40 have to show their parents’ proof of being enrolled as voters in the 2003 list or prove their identity, citizenship, along with either of their parents’ identity and citizenship. Four, voters who were born after 2004 and are less than 21 years of age, must either show their parent’s proof of being enrolled as voters in 2003 or prove their identity and citizenship with documentary evidence of citizenship and identity of both their parents. (IPA Service)
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