The SIR controversy is no longer merely about electoral rolls. It is about what happens when an institution entrusted with protecting the franchise exercises the power to exclude citizens from it without sufficient explanation. OSWALD PEREIRA reports
A name missing from an ordinary government record may be corrected later. But a name missing from an electoral roll can prevent a citizen from voting if the mistake is not rectified in time.
That is why the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls cannot be treated as an ordinary bureaucratic exercise. When the State removes a citizen from the electoral roll, the institution making that decision must be able to explain why. The burden cannot rest on the citizen to discover what happened and fight to get his vote back in the rolls.
That is the central issue in the present agitation against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. The demand for his resignation may seem justified by political parties and citizens. But the more fundamental question is whether the SIR process has protected every eligible voter or created a system in which legitimate voters can fall through the cracks without adequate explanation or an effective remedy.
More than 13 crore names were struck from the draft rolls across 30 States and Union Territories. The Election Commission says the exercise is intended to clean up electoral rolls. Critics argue that the scale of the deletions creates a serious risk of legitimate voters being excluded. The Commission has subsequently moved to identify and enrol voters who may have been left out.
A draft deletion is not the same as permanent disenfranchisement, and that distinction must be kept clear. But neither should the scale of the exercise be minimised. When millions of names disappear from the draft rolls, the Election Commission owes citizens clear answers and an effective mechanism for correction.
The questions are straightforward: whose names were removed, and on what grounds? How many were wrongly excluded and how quickly can eligible voters get back on the list?
These are the primary democratic questions. Everything else should follow from the answers.
Opposition parties and the Cockroach Janta Party have demanded Kumar’s resignation. On October 2, protesters gathered in Delhi and Mumbai. While police imposed restrictions around Jantar Mantar, protesters held a rally at Shivaji Park in Mumbai, where the police did not stop them. In Delhi, hundreds of protesters, including political leaders, activists and students, were detained or arrested.
Those who resisted by lying on the road were dragged by their hands and feet and taken to waiting buses. Protesters shouted slogans, alleging that such action was an assault on democracy.
The State has the right to regulate demonstrations and prevent violence. But restricting a protest does not answer the underlying questions. If citizens are challenging the administration of electoral rolls, the most effective response is to put the relevant facts into the public domain and provide a clear mechanism through which disputed deletions can be examined and corrected.
The Election Commission is entrusted with administering elections. That gives it enormous constitutional responsibility, but not immunity from scrutiny. An institution exercising such power must be able to explain how its decisions are made. The greater the power exercised over the citizen, the greater the obligation to make its exercise understandable and reviewable.
The controversy has acquired another dimension. The Indian Express has reported that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi recorded objections on 14 occasions over 10 months on several issues connected with the functioning of the poll panel. The Commission has subsequently sought to address some of these concerns. Institutional disagreement does not by itself establish wrongdoing, but it is legitimate material for public examination when the functioning of the electoral institution is under scrutiny.
The protesters, too, have a responsibility. Allegations are not proof, and the 13 crore figure should not be presented as 13 crore people permanently deprived of their vote.
The stronger and more defensible demand is this: show what happened to those names, explain the grounds for deletion, make the correction process accessible and ensure that every eligible voter has a genuine opportunity to exercise their franchise.
That is where the issue moves beyond party politics. An electoral roll is not merely a government database. It is the administrative gateway to an election. If the gateway is inaccurate, opaque or difficult to challenge, the consequences are political, not merely bureaucratic.
This is also why peaceful protest deserves space. Citizens must be able to question institutions exercising public power. The State may impose reasonable restrictions for public order, but those restrictions should not become a substitute for answering legitimate questions about the administration of the electoral rolls.
None of this means that every protest is justified or that every allegation is correct. Political parties must substantiate their claims. Protesters must distinguish between evidence and accusation. The Election Commission must distinguish between defending its procedures and demonstrating that those procedures protect eligible voters. A serious dispute over elections requires evidence from all sides, not louder rhetoric.
Democracy is more than the act of voting. It also depends on institutions whose decisions can be examined, challenged and corrected. The test of an institution is not whether it escapes criticism. It is whether its decisions can withstand scrutiny.
The present controversy therefore places three responsibilities on the table. The Election Commission must demonstrate that the SIR process is transparent, accurate and capable of correcting mistakes. Political parties and protesters must substantiate their allegations. And the State must ensure that regulation of demonstrations does not prevent peaceful citizens from questioning the administration of the electoral rolls.
There is some good news in the agitation. People are protesting because they have not accepted that an administrative decision affecting their political rights is beyond question.
But the concern is that the machinery of the State responds to democratic protest with barricades and detention. That risks turning a legitimate debate about electoral administration into a confrontation between citizens and the State.
The issue is ultimately larger than Gyanesh Kumar, the opposition or the CJP. It is about the relationship between the citizen and the institution that administers the electoral roll.
The Constitution begins with “We, the People of India” because political authority ultimately derives from the people. That principle places a simple obligation on every institution exercising public power: it must be answerable to the citizens it serves.
When an eligible citizen’s name disappears from the electoral roll, will the system merely ask that citizen to prove the right to vote—or will the system itself accept the responsibility of showing that the citizen has not been wrongly excluded?
The Special Intensive Revision is therefore a test of the electoral machinery itself. Removing ineligible and bogus voters is a legitimate administrative objective. But the process must also ensure that legitimate voters are not wrongly removed and robbed of their right to vote—and that anyone who is excluded has a clear, accessible and timely route to inclusion and securing his right to vote.
In other words, will it be vote chori or vote tijori—vote theft or vote security for democratic India? That is the most important question to have arisen from the SIR controversy. A satisfactory answer will restore confidence in Indian democracy. Anything less could set India on a downward slide whose consequences are difficult to spell out.
Oswald Pereira, a senior journalist, has written ten books, including The Vijay Revolution: People Power & the Politics of Hope, Beyond Autobiography of a Yogi, The Newsroom Mafia, Chaddi Buddies, The Krishna-Christ Connexion, How to Create Miracles in Our Daily Life and Crime Patrol: The Most Thrilling Stories. Oswald is a disciple of Paramhansa Yogananda, and practises Kriya Yoga.
More Stories by Oswald Pereira
Some images are AI generated