Delhi SIR’s warning bell
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As the Election Commission of India’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls has reached the national capital, extremely serious and highly ridiculous details are coming to light. From Union External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta, former Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his family, former Deputy Prime Minister and senior BJP leader L.K. Advani, former Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankhar and his family, and prominent lawyer and MP Kapil Sibal to Election Commissioner S.S. Sandhu, who is leading the exercise, the Commission has issued notices to all of them. Various discrepancies, including differences in age and address and mismatches with the previous SIR electoral roll, have been cited as reasons for issuing the notices. After it emerged that the ‘existence’ of several prominent people had been ‘questioned’, the Election Commission came forward with a damage-control exercise. The issue concerning the Chief Minister was resolved after the Booth Level Officer formally verified her details. In the case of other prominent figures, including Kejriwal, the Election Commission has also stepped forward with assurances of a similar nature. The Commission’s response is that notices have been issued to those whose names were missing from the previous SIR electoral roll and to those whose names and documents could not be matched during the last revision. The Commission says those who have received notices must submit their replies along with adequate documents by October 29, following which a new electoral roll incorporating the corrections will be published on November 4. According to information disclosed by the Commission, it has issued such notices to 3.313 million voters.
The Opposition, along with experts including a former Chief Election Commissioner, has been alleging, directly and indirectly, that through the SIR, the Election Commission is doing the job of legitimising the BJP’s strategy of keeping the governments at the Centre and in various states perpetually under its control. It cannot be denied that whenever the process of preparing the SIR has begun in different states, experiences have emerged that substantiate these allegations. The BJP government has adopted an extremely peculiar approach. Not only is the government retreating from its primary responsibility of ensuring that people enjoy democratic rights such as citizenship and the right to vote, but it is also shifting that responsibility onto citizens themselves. The SIR exercise requires people who have lived in the country for decades or even centuries to produce evidence that they have been living here as its citizens. Instead of making an intensive effort to include those who produce such evidence, the Commission appears more eager to immediately exclude those who fail to provide it. This is why the Congress has accused the SIR of evolving into a mechanism to exclude the poor and marginalised sections of society. The revelations by the ‘Reporters’ Collective’ lend support to this allegation.
The ‘Reporters’ Collective’ has found that the Delhi SIR contains problems far more serious than the exclusion of prominent names. More than half of the capital’s voters (54.6 per cent) have either been excluded from the draft electoral roll or received notices over discrepancies. Of the 1.45 crore voters on the rolls before the SIR, 47.6 lakh have been removed on grounds that they were not found at their addresses, had shifted elsewhere, had died or were duplicate entries. Notices citing discrepancies have also been issued to the remaining 31.6 lakh voters in the draft roll. In other words, of the 1.45 crore voters, 79.2 lakh could either be excluded from the SIR roll or removed if they fail to complete the arduous process of providing not only identity documents but also proof of their links to previous generations. The VIPs on the list may somehow find their way into the final roll. But what about the poor? If the number of voters removed at a polling booth exceeds two per cent, the Electoral Registration Officer is required to conduct an individual verification to ensure that there are no errors. However, in 639 of the 14,947 polling booths across Delhi’s 70 Assembly constituencies, the deletions exceed two per cent. In 29 booths, 70 per cent of voters have been excluded. In nine of these booths, houses have been demolished as part of government-led evictions. Of the 10,015 voters in these areas, 8,800 have been removed from the electoral roll.
Within six months of the BJP coming to power in Delhi, 3,000 houses in 23 colonies were demolished, leaving 15,000 people homeless. With these people having lost their names and addresses, there is little doubt that they are unlikely to find their way onto the electoral roll. As the SIR progresses in Delhi and elsewhere, it is becoming increasingly clear that there is substance in the complaint that the revision of electoral rolls is being carried out in a manner that helps ensure the BJP’s electoral victory. As the Supreme Court considers their complaints today, Tuesday, it remains to be seen whether it will pave the way for a resolution or strengthen the doubts being raised against the Election Commission and the Central government over the issue.