‘War against voters’: CPI(M) asks Election Commission to scrap electoral roll revision

New Delhi: CPI(M) on Saturday asked Election Commission to "abandon" the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, claiming that the "chaotic, arbitrary, and exclusionary" exercise is "turning into a war against the people" by threatening the integrity of the voter list and the fundamental right to vote.

General Secretary MA Baby shot off a letter to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar saying that the present SIR does not begin with a "blank roll" as prescribed in law for intensive revisions. He said the SIR does not provide for systematic addition but instead is "designed to delete" names "defeating" the very purpose of law.

"While citizenship is a prerequisite for voter enrolment, its determination does not fall within the jurisdiction of the Election Commission of India. Under the guise of the SIR what is becoming apparent is the initiation of the process to determine citizenship. Utterances by the Assam Chief Minister have only added grist to the mill," he said.

"The right to vote is the bedrock of our democracy. Any process that threatens its universal and equal exercise must be halted and reconsidered with utmost seriousness...we once again urge the Election Commission of India to abandon this exercise which is turning into a war against the people," he said.

Acknowledging that the periodic revision of electoral rolls is a routine and essential democratic exercise, he said the manner, timing and methodology of the present SIR depart sharply from established law, past practice, and constitutional principles.

Far from being a routine, transparent, and citizen-friendly process, he said it has turned into a "chaotic, arbitrary, and exclusionary exercise" that threatens both the integrity of the electoral rolls and the fundamental right to vote.

In his letter, he highlighted the "unrealistically compressed timeframe" that could "inevitably vitiates the electoral atmosphere and fraught with the danger of large-scale" errors and exclusions, lack of consultation and putting "burden" on already-enrolled voters to "re-establish their eligibility, failing which deletion is threatened" that is "arbitrary, unlawful, and contrary to settled procedure".

"Our apprehension that the design and implementation of the SIR would closely resemble the proposed NRC exercise, and would lead to selective disenfranchisement of certain communities, is turning true," he said.

He recalled that several issues came up during the exercise both in Bihar earlier and in the other states where the exercise is on currently and it included non-delivery of enumeration forms, lack of awareness of alternative procedures, limited or no access to digital means apart from unreasonable documentary requirements has led to exclusion.

"The marginalised and minorities, especially women in the rural areas, have been disproportionally impacted. Like in Bihar where we saw the proportion of voters to population decrease, we fear the same will be repeated in other states as well. Widespread misuse of Form 7 by individuals, in some cases a single individual filing hundreds of these forms have surfaced in Assam, Rajasthan and some other states," he said.

In Assam, Baby said it has been reported that there is widespread misuse of Form 7 through mass third-party objections filed using misappropriated Election Photo Identity Card (EPIC) and mobile numbers. He said voters in Kerala erroneously deleted are being forced to apply afresh using Form 6, rendering their old EPICs invalid and treating them as new voters for no fault of theirs.

Around 97 lakh voters were removed from the base list in Tamil Nadu, with disproportionately high numbers marked as “dead” or “not traceable,” far exceeding plausible demographic trends, he said adding improper notices are being issued, searchable lists are unavailable, and political parties have not been provided relevant data for verification.

Married women, tenants, and displaced persons are disproportionately affected, he said.

In West Bengal, he claimed that an untested and opaque software system is being used to flag 'logical discrepancies', leading to mass, automated notice generation, contrary to representations made before the Supreme Court.

"Electoral officers are being forced into quasi-judicial determinations affecting nearly 1.5 crore electors within impossibly short timelines. A parallel system with the appointment of micro-observers undermining the regular channels of the EC has been put in place in the state. The SIR in West Bengal has turned out to be one of the most controversial. Large sections of the population are going through nightmares and a number of voters have taken their own lives, unable to cope with it," he added.