​Band aid: on the Supreme Court and the Special Intensive Revision process

With the corrections and claims process coming to an end, the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process has seen the release of final electoral rolls except in West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh which are due soon. The net number of voters removed (with fresh additions) from the pre-SIR electoral rolls in States such as Tamil Nadu (nearly 11.5%), Gujarat (13.4%) and Chhattisgarh (11.8%) remain high. Tamil Nadu and Gujarat are, after all, net in-migrant States unlike Bihar where deletions were around 6%. The high number of deletions, and the fact that excisions are higher for female than male electors, suggests that the SIR process, as envisaged and implemented by the Election Commission of India (ECI), suffered from clear structural defects. A clear-cut assessment could have only been possible with comparison with Census figures, but due to the prolonged delay by the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Union Government, only outdated numbers from 2011 are available. The final figures of the electorate in major States where the SIR was conducted indicate that the registered adult population in the final rolls is much below the projected estimates. This again raises the question of whether the ECI should have waited for the Census before rushing the SIR — but that is now only of academic interest.

The exercise’s lacunae and anomalies could have been mitigated if the Supreme Court of India had ruled on SIR’s constitutionality and compelled the ECI to adopt a more robust — though slower — household-by-household count, instead of depending on an enumeration that shifts the burden onto electors to prove their eligibility. This exercise has clearly, and unduly, affected migrant voters — especially those leaving their residence for the short term and married women who have shifted residences. By letting the process to continue despite its frailties, the Court relied on the ECI’s claim that concerns with omissions are overblown, given the relatively few complaints filed by political parties. But the fact that political parties participate in a zero-sum game of competition should alert to the possibility of their relative lack of agency in assisting all electors to be part of the list. Also, unlike other identity documents such as ration card, passport or Aadhaar, the voter identity card is of use only during quinquennial elections, disincentivising citizens from trying to ensure that they are on the list. This is even more so in West Bengal, where the ECI’s shoddy implementation has created such a humongous mess that the Court has sought the services of not just the State’s judicial officers but those of its neighbours to aid in the “legal verification” process. The Court is seeking to ease the hurt rather than aid the process of universal adult franchise.