Presumed guilty, SIR’s spreading stain

Why in the News

An investigation into four booths in Godda, Jharkhand has documented Bharatiya Janata Party workers filing Form 7 objections in bulk, seeking deletion of names from the draft electoral rolls. Many of the voters marked for deletion had already submitted the required documents. Others had lived in the same house for generations or were mapped onto the 2003 rolls. The booths sit inside the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, an exercise that has produced 13 crore deletions nationwide. An inquiry has been ordered into the Godda booths. The contest is over who must prove what: roll maintenance is a routine statutory duty, and a revision that asks a voter to establish belonging converts it into a test of citizenship.

What is the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls?

1. A full re-verification, not a routine update: The Election Commission of India (ECI) requires an existing voter to submit fresh documentary proof of eligibility, in place of the ordinary practice of adding and deleting names on application.
2. Form 7 is the deletion instrument: Under the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, Form 7 allows an objection to a proposed inclusion, an objection to an existing name, or a request for deletion.
3. An earlier intensive roll is the baseline: A voter traceable to the 2003 rolls is treated as verified, and every other voter must produce documents afresh.

What did the Godda booths reveal about how deletions are sought?

1. Bulk objections came from workers of one party: Form 7s were submitted in lots at a minimum of four booths, producing a standoff between election officials and Bharatiya Janata Party workers.
2. Compliance did not protect a voter: Names of people who had filed the required documents, or who were mapped onto the earlier intensive roll, still appeared on the objection lists.
3. The pattern points at a specific set of voters: Objections filed in bulk raise the concern of deletion aimed at minority voters rather than at genuine duplication or migration.
4. An inquiry is the response so far: Officials ordered an inquiry after the report, and no change has been made to how third party objections are received.

How does the revision shift the burden of proof onto the voter?

1. The voter answers an accusation she was never served: The exercise asks her to establish belonging, in place of requiring the objector to establish ineligibility.
2. The documents demanded are hard to access: Proof of the kind sought is least available to the poorest and the least documented households.
3. The deadlines are unrealistic: The window to respond is shorter than the time it takes to obtain a record from a revenue or municipal office.
4. The process itself is the penalty: A voter finally retained on the roll has still spent days, travel and money defending a name she already held.

Where does the Supreme Court’s role in the exercise now stand?

1. It intervened in Bihar: The Court directed the Commission to accept Aadhaar as acceptable proof. It also nudged the Commission toward recording reasons for a deletion.
2. It stepped back in West Bengal: The Court gave the Commission the benefit of every doubt and did not press the questions the exercise had raised.
3. The added layers do not close the process: Micro-observers, judicial officers, a bulky under adjudication list and 19 appellate tribunals were set up too late and carry no deadline, so the appellate process runs on after polling ends.
4. Exclusion carries no defined consequence: A deleted voter is told nothing about what follows, whether detention, deportation, denial of benefits, prolonged litigation or reapplication.

What does criticism from within the electoral establishment add?

1. Legality is being separated from fairness: A former Election Commissioner described the revision as legal but not fair, and located justice in the spirit of the law rather than its letter.
2. The critique names the judiciary alongside the Commission: Statutory institutions and constitutional bodies were described as acting on a might is right basis, with the judiciary validating the result.
3. Participation is the cost being incurred: About 33 percent of the electorate already does not vote, and anxiety over the roll adds a fresh reason to disengage.

Challenges to the Special Intensive Revision

1. No threshold governs a third party objection: The Rules fix no limit on how many Form 7 objections one person may file and no standard of scrutiny before a name is acted on. Eg. Bihar’s revision produced a draft roll from which about 65 lakh names were dropped in a single cycle.
   The Fix: Cap objections per objector per booth and require a recorded hearing before any deletion made on a third party objection.
2. Documentary proof excludes the least documented: A verification standard built on legacy papers falls hardest on people who never received them. Eg. The National Register of Citizens exercise in Assam left about 19 lakh people off the final list in 2019, largely on documentary grounds.
   The Fix: Treat a name on the immediately preceding final roll as presumptive proof, so the objector carries the burden of displacing it.
3. The statutory appeal has no disposal clock: Section 24 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 provides an appeal to the District Magistrate and then to the Chief Electoral Officer, without a fixed period for decision. Eg. The Bengal appellate tribunals will decide claims after the votes have been counted.
   The Fix: Fix a statutory disposal period ending before the last date for nominations, with the name restored by default if it lapses.
4. Migrant workers are structurally exposed: A voter absent from the constituency during verification cannot answer an objection filed against her. Eg. Census 2011 recorded about 45 crore internal migrants in India.
   The Fix: Allow verification through a designated relative or a digital filing that returns a dated acknowledgement.
5. Deletions are published as counts, not as reasons: The Commission reports how many names were removed and not the category of ground on which each was removed. Eg. A household learns of a deletion from the published roll rather than from a served notice.
   The Fix: Publish booth level deletion grounds in a machine readable form, so a pattern is visible before an election rather than after it.

Conclusion

An electoral roll needs continuous cleaning and updating, and that is not in dispute. The dispute is over who carries the burden of proof, and over what a voter is owed when she cannot discharge it. The tests to watch are two: whether the Commission is required to record a reason for every deletion, and whether an excluded voter receives a final decision before polling rather than after it.

Back2Basics

1. The Representation of the People Act, 1950 provides for the allocation of seats in Parliament and the State legislatures, the delimitation of constituencies, and the qualifications of voters.
2. It is the statute under which electoral rolls are prepared and revised, with the machinery of electoral registration officers and booth level machinery drawn from it.
3. Section 21 empowers the Election Commission to direct a special revision of an electoral roll for any constituency, for reasons to be recorded.
4. Section 24 provides the appeal against an inclusion or a deletion, first to the District Magistrate and then to the Chief Electoral Officer.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2018, GS2, 10 marks] In the light of recent controversy regarding the use of Electronic Voting Machines (EVM), what are the challenges before the Election Commission of India to ensure the trustworthiness of elections in India?”