SIR: deletions have increased in Phase 3 States/UT

Why in the News

Phase 3 of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls has removed 6.15 crore names, or 17.1 percent, from the draft rolls of 17 States and Union Territories. The first two phases, covering 13 States and Union Territories, removed 12.3 percent at the same stage, so the current phase runs 4.8 percentage points higher. The Election Commission has offered no reason for the increase. Deletions recorded as Permanently Shifted or Untraceable and Absent have risen as a share of the total, while those recorded as Deceased or Duplicate have fallen. The contested point is whether a process applied uniformly across States can produce this spread of outcomes between phases.

What is a Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls?

1. Special Intensive Revision: It is a house to house re verification of electors in which a fresh roll is prepared, rather than the existing roll being amended entry by entry.
2. Statutory basis: Section 21(3) of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 lets the Election Commission direct a special revision of the roll for any constituency at any time, for reasons it records in writing.
3. The sequence: Enumeration produces the draft roll. A period for claims and objections then runs before the final roll is published.
4. The phases so far: Bihar was the only State in Phase 1, 12 more States and Union Territories followed in Phase 2, and 19 are in the Phase 3 schedule.

How much larger are the Phase 3 deletions?

1. Phase 3 totals: The rolls of 17 States and Union Territories held 36.1 crore voters before the revision and 29.9 crore in the draft rolls.
2. The earlier phases: The 13 States and Union Territories of Phases 1 and 2 went from 58.9 crore voters to 51.7 crore, a deletion of 7.22 crore names.
3. Phase 1 alone: Bihar’s roll fell from 7.9 crore to 7.2 crore, a deletion of 0.65 crore names or 8.28 percent, and its final roll stood at 7.4 crore.
4. Coverage of the figures: Two of the 19 Phase 3 States and Union Territories, Nagaland and Tripura, have not completed enumeration, so the totals cover 17.
5. The draft is close to the final: Net deletions across the first two phases moved only from 12.3 percent in the draft rolls to 10.5 percent in the final rolls, so the Phase 3 figure is unlikely to fall far.
6. States above the earlier range: Among States and Union Territories holding at least one crore voters before the revision, only Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh crossed 15 percent in the first two phases. Six crossed it in Phase 3, and four of them, Delhi, Maharashtra, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, deleted 20 percent or more.

Why does urbanisation not explain the jump?

1. The urbanisation reading: Phase 3 covers several heavily urbanised States, and high urban mobility is the explanation that would account for more entries marked absent or shifted.
2. Urbanised States in the earlier phase: Tamil Nadu, Keralam and Gujarat are also heavily urbanised and recorded no comparable rise when they were revised in Phase 2.
3. City level comparison: Deletions in Hyderabad, Mumbai and Bengaluru were of a higher magnitude than those in Chennai or Ahmedabad.
4. The rural comparison: Jharkhand, which is not urbanised, deleted 16.5 percent in Phase 3, against 12.9 percent in Chhattisgarh in Phase 2.

What has changed in the reasons recorded against each deletion?

1. The four recorded reasons: A deletion is entered as Absent or Shifted, Deceased, Duplicate, or Others.
2. The shift between categories: The share recorded as Permanently Shifted or Untraceable and Absent has risen across the phases, and the share recorded as Deceased or Duplicate has fallen correspondingly.
3. Why the category matters: A death or a duplicate entry is checkable against a record that exists independently of the enumerator. Absence is an inference drawn at the door and leaves no document behind it.
4. The Others category: Press statements by Chief Electoral Officers account for about 9.73 lakh names under Others, and more States are using the category in Phase 3.
5. The category is missing from the lists: The full deletion lists for Delhi, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Telangana carry not one person marked Others, indicating those names were clubbed under Absent instead.
6. What uniform application would imply: A process defined and applied identically across States would not produce this divergence in the reasons recorded against deleted names.

Challenges to the Special Intensive Revision

1. Absence is recorded without a verifiable record: A deletion marked Untraceable or Absent rests on an enumerator not finding the elector at the address, which no document either proves or disproves. Eg. Seasonal migration from Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh to construction sites in Delhi and Mumbai keeps workers away from their registered address for months at a stretch.
   The Fix: Require a second visit on a different date and a signed attestation from the local body before an absence deletion is entered.
2. No published account of what changed between phases: The Election Commission has recorded a sharp jump in the deletion rate and in the reasons used without stating what changed in the instructions or the procedure. Eg. The phase wise data itself had to be assembled from Commission and State Chief Electoral Officer websites rather than from any explanatory note.
   The Fix: Publish the enumerator instructions issued for each phase, with any mid process revision to them dated and recorded.
3. The correction mechanism depends on the elector noticing: A deletion is reversed through claims and objections, which requires the affected person to learn that the name is gone. Eg. An elector who has migrated is the least likely to see a draft roll published at the address they left.
   The Fix: Serve an individual notice by post and to the registered mobile number for every proposed deletion, carrying the reason recorded against the name.
4. A citizenship question rides on an administrative exercise: An intensive revision asks an existing elector to establish eligibility afresh, and eligibility includes citizenship, which the electoral machinery is not equipped to adjudicate. Eg. Section 16 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 disqualifies a non citizen from registration, while determination of citizenship itself sits under the Citizenship Act, 1955.
   The Fix: Confine the enumerator to recording documents and refer any citizenship doubt to the authority designated under the Citizenship Act, 1955.
5. Timing against the election calendar: A revision concluded close to a poll leaves an excluded elector little room to be restored before voting. Eg. Bihar’s revision ran through the months immediately preceding its Assembly election.
   The Fix: Fix a minimum interval between publication of the final roll and the last date for nominations, so restoration remains possible.

Conclusion

A roll revision is judged by whether the people removed from it had genuinely ceased to be entitled to be on it, and that judgement rests entirely on the reason recorded against each name. The unresolved tension is between a process described as uniformly applied and outcomes that differ sharply between phases, with no published account of what changed in between. The marker to watch is the Phase 3 final roll, since the movement between draft and final is the only available measure of how many of these removals survive scrutiny.

Matching Previous Year Question

“Is the right to vote a fundamental right? Discuss the position of the Election Commission of India while undertaking the revision of electoral rolls. Can it also examine the question of citizenship of voters?”