No Fig Leaf to Salvage Credibility of the Constitutional Body
SHOCKING as it may sound, the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) initiated in Bihar by the Election Commission of India (ECI), when seen contextually, would actually unravel graver implications which have now come out in the open. When the process was initiated on June 25, within a few days it became obvious that the exercise was aimed far beyond the scope of purifying the electoral rolls.
Three special features of the exercise stood out. Firstly, the exercise would put the burden of proof on the citizen to prove that he/she is a legitimate voter to appear in the electoral rolls. In the past, the task of revising the electoral rolls was pursued by enumerators designated by the ECI. In the present case, the existing or the potential votes were burdened with the responsibility of not only filling up a form, but also producing one of the 11 documents prescribed by the ECI. With extremely low levels of access to official documents, it was clear that this was not an exercise aimed at revision, but exclusion and deletion. This clearly implied that the principle of universality of voting right, a Constitutional right recognised by successive Supreme Court judgments, would be discarded.
The second question was whether the ECI was usurping the right of determining the citizenship of the voter. The argument was based on the tangential reference to citizenship in Article 326 of the Constitution, to qualify for the exercise of right as a voter. While the precondition of citizenship is unexceptionable, the ECI was not vested with the responsibility of determining the same. It was the Home Ministry which was the designated authority for the purpose. However, SIR ignored this requirement with nonchalance.
Finally, the time frame for the exercise in a state like Bihar, where large number of migrants were going out of the state to earn their livelihood, was too small. An extremely small window was made available to go through the exercise during the monsoon with flood-like situation in many areas. Such an intensive exercise was well-nigh impossible, with untrained Booth Level Officers (BLOs).
Therefore, the final result is not a surprise. Over 81 lakh citizens could not find their place in the final electoral roll which has been released. 1.38 crore voters’ addresses are suspicious. More than nine lakh women voters have lost their voting rights. More than 14 lakh voters have multiple EPIC’s. There are 2,258 premises which have more than 100 voters each. Therefore, far from being a transparent, complaint free and clean list, the final electoral rolls have become deeply questionable.
It was very clear from the outset that this exercise was to benefit the BJP in the Bihar Legislative Assembly elections, which have seen close contests in the past. Only the BJP had jumped into the fray to defend the ECI’s SIR exercise. Naturally, the Opposition and concerned citizens were up in arms and tried every legal and Constitutional avenue to rectify the situation. Election petitions by parties and citizens’ organisations are still under adjudication of the Supreme Court. Though, through a limited interim order, the apex court has forced the ECI to accept a twelfth document, the Aadhaar card, substantial issues remain and there is a large-scale decrease in the number of voters.
That the ECI’s entire effort has been in the manner of subterfuge, is now apparent. The ECI had all along argued that the 2025 SIR exercise in Bihar is nothing extraordinary, virtually a repeat of what was done in 2003. But, when asked to produce the guidelines issued by the ECI in 2003, the poll body failed to do so confessing that they could not find those relevant official documents. This was stated by the ECI in its affidavit to the Supreme Court. It was a display of ineptitude and betrayed the degree of institutional incompetence.
That they have indulged in white lies is now clear. The Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR) has submitted before the Supreme Court a comprehensive document running into thousands of pages, containing the 2003 directions. It comprehensively shows the subterfuge of the ECI on all three counts which were raised in the wake of the exercise.
If there was any confusion at all, the chief lieutenant of Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah has put it to rest. He recently declared that the exercise was to detect, delete and deport non-citizens through SIR.
To buttress this argument, he asserted that the relative increase in the country’s Muslim population was not due to a spike in fertility rate, but due to large scale infiltration. Shah pointed out that the Muslim population in the country increased at the rate of 24.6 per cent, while the Hindu population decreased by 4.5 per cent. With this premise his party and “The government will identify infiltrators, make every effort to ensure their names are removed from the voters list, and subsequently work to deport them to their countries.”
He clearly enunciated the background of SIR. The only tragedy is, like failing to apprehend terrorist elements in Pahalgam, his ministry has squarely failed to pinpoint the infiltrators as well. Having failed to do so, he is now trying to fire from the shoulders of the ECI. His menacing blunt tone threatens that nobody should oppose the SIR, even if it disenfranchises a large number of legitimate Indian citizens, as is explicitly evident from the SIR exercise in Bihar.
An excellent study by the Pew Research Centre has brought out the reality of population in India, with religion wise break up. Apart from establishing the fact that fertility rate in India as a whole has come down almost at the same rate as advanced economies; among Indian Muslims, fertility rate has declined dramatically from 4.4 children per woman in 1992 to 2.6 children in 2015, based on data from the National Family & Health Survey (NFHS).
Who will tell Amit Shah that there is no iota of substance in his fictional narrative of ‘infiltrators’ taking over India? He simply intends to provoke uncertainty, insecurity and mutual hatred to pursue the goal of communal polarisation during this election season. What is pertinent is that the SIR exercise which was conducted for identifying infiltrators has produced a big zero! In the face of persistent questioning, Gyanesh Kumar, the Chief Election Commissioner of India, failed to come up with figures of foreign nationals found and deleted from the final electoral roll.
It is as clear as daylight that the SIR exercise, which otherwise would have been a legitimate effort to ensure a transparent and democratic exercise, has degenerated into an obnoxious tool to destroy constitutional institutions of governance.
(October 15, 2025)
Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connection
or reload the browserDisable Ginger?How to use GingerRephraseRephrase with Ginger (Ctrl+Alt+E)Edit in GingerGinger is checking your text for mistakes...×
