The publication of the final Bihar voter list Tuesday, after the conclusion of the sprawling exercise of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls that started in June, slays two spectres, one on each side of the political divide. The fears of mass disenfranchisement of voters, which the Opposition and civil society groups had articulated, did not come true — Tuesday’s list has 7.42 crore voters, about 6 per cent less than the 7.89 crore in June. Of course, for this reassuring outcome, the Opposition’s campaign also deserves some credit, along with the Supreme Court’s interventions and ground-level tracking by a vigilant media of the SIR’s fallout. The final voter list also shows that one of the prime motivations of the EC’s exercise, played up by the Central government — to weed out the illegal immigrant, the foreigner or the “ghuspaithiya” from the electoral rolls — didn’t quite match the evidence. The design of the SIR in Bihar, which set the bar unprecedentedly high for inclusion, cast the burden of citizenship’s proof on the voter, who would be regarded with suspicion until proved otherwise. It recast what used to be an exercise to update/clean up the electoral rolls as an arduous citizenship test, especially for the undocumented and marginalised. The final roll, however, saw 68.6 lakh deletions mostly on account of cases of death, migration and duplication. A negligible percentage of foreigners, if any, were removed from the list, dispelling the conspiratorial claims that a silent and uncontrolled infiltration is manipulating the country’s electoral process.
The modifications of the SIR towards making it more inclusive and less exclusionary came because of the SC’s response to petitions challenging its timing, intent and format, and because of pressure brought to bear by the Opposition and ground-level media reports — including a series in this paper. It framed the heartening kick-in of checks and balances in a constitutional democracy. While upholding the EC’s power to carry out the exercise, the Court nudged the Commission to be more transparent on deletions, give reasons why, and eventually, include the widely accessible Aadhaar in the list of acceptable documents. There are valuable lessons here that must illuminate the way forward for the EC. As it extends the SIR beyond Bihar, it must keep the focus on counting every voter in, in the specific and diverse contexts of different states.
The routine cleaning up of electoral rolls is a much-needed exercise and an intensive revision that involves house-to-house enumeration to prepare fresh rolls from scratch without relying on existing lists may also be called for, to keep step with changes like urbanisation, migration, the coming of age of new voters and the need to delete names of the dead. Through it all, however, the SIR in Bihar has underlined the need for the EC to show greater equanimity and humility. There were moments in the last three months and more when the Commission appeared to be more a player — treating the Opposition as an adversary and taking its cue from the government. Going ahead, it must make a greater effort to live up to its own past record of being — and being seen to be — an institution that is trusted for its independence, fairness and political neutrality. Bihar SIR should, hopefully, show EC the way ahead.
