​Fraught franchise, Pg8

Key Highlights:

• The Election Commission of India (ECI) completed a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar, resulting in 7.42 crore electors.
• This figure represents a significant drop from the previous 7.89 crore electors before the revision.
• The Supreme Court of India intervened, requiring the ECI to provide reasons for deletions.
• Concerns arose regarding the disproportionate deletion of women's names from the electoral rolls.

Detailed Insights:

• The SIR aimed to clean up electoral rolls by removing names due to death, migration, duplication, or lack of enumeration.
• The ECI's process lacked transparency, with no consolidated list of excluded individuals or prior notice provided initially.
• The ECI's refusal to accept widely-held identity documents disadvantaged the poor, illiterate, women, Scheduled Castes, and Other Backward Classes.
• Electoral management research suggests door-to-door verification, use of widely held IDs, and advance publication of deletion reasons to enhance inclusion.
• Prior revisions in India relied on local booth-level officers and physical checks, which helped identify errors more effectively.
• Digital tools can consolidate and publish exclusion data while ensuring physical notice at the constituency level, balancing transparency with privacy.

Key Concepts Involved:

• Electoral Roll: A list of persons eligible to vote in an election.
• Special Intensive Revision (SIR): A focused effort to update and correct electoral rolls.
• Booth-Level Officer: A local official responsible for electoral tasks at the polling booth level.