The Election Commission of India needs to pause and ask itself an urgent question: Why is the exercise it has initiated in Bihar changing the subject in the poll-bound state — from the excitements of who the people will vote for, to anxieties about whether or not all voters will be allowed to cast their vote, which is their fundamental right? On paper, the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls that the EC has launched since June 28, seems unexceptionable. After all, Article 324 of the Constitution empowers the EC to oversee elections and Article 326 directs that the franchise be limited to adult Indian citizens. The updating of electoral rolls is supported by the Registration of Electors Rules 1960 and Representation of the People Act 1950. The last SIR was done in 2003 and there have been annual summary revisions in several states since. The EC has cited the reasons why — migration, need to weed out names of foreign illegal immigrants, to include newly eligible voters, delete names of the dead. And yet, the ongoing exercise takes place in circumstances that have stoked widespread insecurities.
It must look again at some of the available data on Bihar — where in 2007, the year those who have become eligible to vote in this election were born, only one-fourth of the estimated births were registered; where according to 2022 estimates, only 14.71 per cent graduated from class 10; where total number of valid passports issued till 2023 was barely 2 per cent. The EC must also remind itself of its own stellar record: Bihar was among the states that benefited most from the electoral reforms that the Commission initiated in the 1990s and built upon subsequently. In this state of backwardness and inequalities, the rigorous supervision of free and fair polls — moving the polling booth to Dalit neighbourhoods, for example —has meant a heartening deepening of democracy. The EC must immediately shift the exercise of revision of electoral rolls to a later time, after this election is done, and allow space for feedback, public awareness campaigns, consultation with all parties. At stake is the people’s trust, and its institutional credibility. At stake, most of all, is the sanctity of every citizen’s constitutionally guaranteed fundamental right to vote. For, on refreshed poll lists, Bihar will show the way for the nation.
