SIR needs reform. But let’s go by numbers, not protestors’ slogans

Why in the News

Claims that 13 to 14 crore voters were deleted in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) come down to about 1 crore wrongly removed, once those never on the rolls are counted out. In the nine States with final rolls, home to three in five Indian adults, the rolls fall 7.1 crore short of the adult population, mostly young adults who had never registered.

What does disenfranchisement actually mean here?

1. What the SIR is: A house to house check of every roll entry by booth level officers, replacing the routine annual revision.
2. What the Constitution requires: Article 326 sets three conditions: Indian citizenship, the age of eighteen and ordinary residence. Anyone meeting them is entitled to registration.
3. What disenfranchisement is: It is the gap between the final roll and an expected roll, meaning one listing everyone who would normally register and no one else.
4. The takeaway: Measuring deletions against all adults counts people who never registered as though they had been removed, which inflates about one crore wrongful removals into seven crore.

How large is the shortfall once the unregistered are counted?

1. Adults against names: The nine States hold 59.9 crore adults against 52.8 crore names on the final rolls.
2. The young who never registered: On the Election Commission’s own rolls before the revision, four in ten young adults in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar were unregistered, 5.2 crore across the nine States.
3. Older non-registrants: Another 1.5% of adults are older people who never registered, or who moved and never registered again.
4. The expected roll: Those groups put 6.1 crore adults off the roll in the normal course, so the expected roll is 53.8 crore.

Were the rolls clean before the revision?

1. Names the rolls carried: Before the revision the nine States had 58.6 crore names, nearly 5 crore more than a clean roll holds.
2. What the surplus was: The difference was the dead, the departed and the duplicated, which an intensive revision exists to remove.
3. A critic concedes: One author of the higher estimate now accepts that the old rolls left out up to 10% of adults, and that most deletions are legitimate.
4. Where the roll overshoots: Bihar’s final roll holds 7.4 crore names against 6.8 crore expected, largely migrants working elsewhere who stay registered at home.

What does voluntary registration look like elsewhere?

1. A roll never matches the population: Where registration is voluntary, the roll always falls short of the adults, and nobody calls that disenfranchisement.
2. Canada: 4% to 7% of eligible Canadians are missing from the lists.
3. Britain: 11% to 14% of Britons are missing.
4. United States: A quarter of American voting age citizens are not on the rolls.

Challenges

1. Haste before elections: The revision was run quickly, often just before State elections, leaving little time for corrections.
2. Paperwork on the poorest: Document demands and discrepancy notices over a misspelt name fell on poor and migrant voters, those least able to answer.
3. Unequal impact: The discrepancy rules fell hardest on identifiable communities. Eg. Muslims in Murshidabad and Malda.
4. Appointments law: The 2023 law on appointing Election Commissioners lets the government effectively choose them, which feeds doubt about its impartiality.

Way Forward

1. Burden on the state: Where citizenship is doubted the state should prove its case before a tribunal, not ask a registered citizen to prove it again.
2. Publish the removals: The Election Commission should publish the national post-revision roll, and removals by reason, State and booth.
3. Settle the passport question: The Commission and the Ministry of External Affairs should state jointly that a passport, issued after police verification, proves citizenship.
4. Standing tribunals: Roll appeals should go to year round tribunals that decide them before the poll, not after it.

Conclusion

The case for reform does not rest on the largest available number, and inflating the count of excluded voters lets the Election Commission dismiss genuine exclusions with invented ones. Until a citizen on the roll is presumed a citizen unless the state shows otherwise, every revision will reopen the same dispute.

Key numbers

1. Share short: The nine States’ rolls are 12% below the projected adult population.
2. Appeals in West Bengal: Fewer than 0.05% of 34 lakh appeals were heard before election day.
3. Appeals upheld: Tribunals have since found 90% of appellants valid.
4. West Bengal’s shortfall: The final roll fell about 60 lakh short of the expected roll.
5. Unregistered young in Uttar Pradesh: 2.3 crore, counted by the Commission in 2024 before the revision.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2026, GS2, 10 marks] 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?”