Flawed By Design, Exclusionary In Impact, Pg8

Key Highlights:

• The Election Commission of India (ECI) launched a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, termed an exercise to "purify" the rolls, which has led to significant deletions of voters.
• The SIR process resulted in 13.37 crore names being struck off during the draft stage across 30 States and Union Territories in three phases.
• The deletion rate escalated from 8.3% in Bihar to 17% in Phase 3, with net deletions reaching approximately 6.2 crore in Phases 1 and 2.
• The Supreme Court of India upheld the SIR on May 27, 2026, despite concerns about disenfranchisement and its deviation from established electoral procedures.
• Two Election Commissioners, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, reportedly raised at least 14 objections to the SIR decisions between October 2025 and August 2026.

Detailed Insights:

• The ECI's Manual on Electoral Rolls (2023) mandates door-to-door enumeration and places the onus of proving ineligibility on the objector, not the elector.
• The SIR inverted this procedure, shifting the burden of proof onto electors and requiring them to trace their presence on old rolls or produce documents.
• Voters who were untraceable, did not receive forms, or were illiterate were dropped from the draft roll, even if they had voted in previous elections.
• Deleted voters must re-apply through Form 6, typically used for new voters, making it difficult to distinguish new registrations from returning voters.
• The SIR used "logical discrepancies" flagged by software, such as spelling differences or arbitrary age gaps, to identify voters for scrutiny.
• In West Bengal, 60 lakh names were flagged, leading to 27 lakh deletions, with 65% of those deleted after adjudication being Muslims, despite their 27% population share.
• The centralisation of changes through the Electoral Roll Officers’ Network (ERONet) database has reportedly overridden the authority of statutory Electoral Registration Officers.
• The absence of a recent Census has deprived the ECI of a firm population baseline to verify the accuracy of the revised rolls.
• The Supreme Court's ruling on May 27, 2026, allowed the ECI to use Section 21(3) for a statewide revision, departing from its usual targeted application.
• The Court sidestepped its 1995 ruling in Lal Babu Hussein, which established a presumption of validity for names on electoral rolls and required notice and hearing before deletion.

Key Concepts Involved:

• Election Commission of India (ECI): An autonomous constitutional authority responsible for administering election processes in India.
• Universal Adult Franchise: The right of all adult citizens to vote, regardless of wealth, income, gender, social status, race, or ethnicity.
• Special Intensive Revision (SIR): An exercise by the ECI to verify and revise electoral rolls through house-to-house enumeration and verification of voter data.
• Electoral Rolls: Lists of eligible voters for a particular constituency, maintained and updated by the ECI.
• Form 6: The application form used by Indian citizens to register their names in the electoral roll for voting purposes.
• Electoral Roll Officers’ Network (ERONet): A centralized digital platform used by the ECI for managing voter registration, migration, and deletion processes.
• Booth Level Officers (BLOs): Local government officials appointed by the ECI to assist in updating electoral rolls and ensuring their accuracy at the grassroots level.
• Lal Babu Hussein (1995): A landmark Supreme Court of India judgment that emphasized procedural fairness and the presumption of validity for names already on electoral rolls.