When electoral revision threatens to exclude legitimate voters, it strikes at the heart of democracy: the citizen’s right to choose who governs. OSWALD PEREIRA reports
The right to vote is not a favour bestowed by the government. It is a fundamental instrument of democratic citizenship, through which people exercise their sovereign power.
A government may change, a political party may rise or fall, and leaders may come and go. But the citizen’s right to participate in choosing the government must remain protected.
That is why the controversy surrounding the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls has assumed such significance. More than 13 crore names have been left off draft electoral rolls across the country, according to recent reports.
The Election Commission maintains that the exercise seeks to remove ineligible and duplicate entries and ensure accurate voter lists. Critics, however, fear that genuine voters could be deprived of their democratic rights in the process. The scale of the deletions demands answers, transparency and effective safeguards.
The issue is not whether electoral rolls should be cleaned up. Of course they should. Dead voters, duplicate entries and names of people who are not legally entitled to vote must be removed. Elections cannot be fair if their basic records are unreliable. But the process of correcting electoral rolls must not create an injustice greater than the problem it seeks to solve.
There is an enduring principle in jurisprudence: it is better for a hundred guilty persons to escape than for one innocent person to suffer an unjust conviction. The principle recognises that the abuse of state power against an innocent person is an especially grave failure of justice. Democracy should apply a comparable standard when it comes to the right to vote.
If forced to choose between tolerating a hundred bogus votes and wrongfully denying one legitimate citizen the right to vote, the democratic instinct must favour protecting the legitimate voter. This is not an argument for accepting electoral fraud. It is a warning that the cure must not be more damaging than the disease. Fraud must be detected and punished, but genuine citizens must not become collateral damage in the pursuit of administrative perfection.
A name on an electoral roll is not merely an entry in a government database. It represents a citizen’s place in the republic. Remove that name unjustly, and the individual loses the opportunity to influence the government that will make decisions about the individual’s life, livelihood and future. The injury is both personal and constitutional.
The consequences can be especially severe for people who are poor, elderly, migrant, disabled or unable to navigate complicated documentation requirements. A person may have lived in the same locality for decades yet struggle to produce a particular record. Another may discover that a spelling discrepancy or a technical error has placed the right to vote in jeopardy. Administrative procedures that appear straightforward on paper can become formidable obstacles in real life.
The burden of correcting an error should not fall entirely on the citizen when the state has the means to verify the relevant facts. Authorities must provide accessible procedures, clear reasons for proposed deletions, adequate time to respond and a meaningful opportunity to appeal. Where uncertainty exists, careful verification is preferable to automatic exclusion.
The protests against SIR in Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru have brought these concerns into the public arena. Opposition parties, civil society groups and the youth-led Cockroach Janta Party have joined demonstrations, accusing the authorities of vote chori, or theft of votes. Their allegations must be investigated rather than brushed under the carpet.
The revision has been defended as an effort to improve electoral accuracy. But official assurances alone cannot settle a controversy of this magnitude.
The Election Commission is entrusted with conducting elections impartially and protecting public confidence in the electoral process. Its credibility depends not only on whether its decisions are lawful, but also on whether its procedures are transparent, fair and open to scrutiny.
The Commission should publish clear, verifiable explanations for deletions, ensure that affected citizens can check their status easily, and establish accessible mechanisms for restoring names wrongly excluded.
Independent scrutiny and timely grievance redressal would help distinguish genuine corrections from mistakes and answer suspicions with evidence. The objective must be to ensure that every eligible citizen is on the rolls and every ineligible entry is dealt with according to law.
Political parties, too, have a responsibility. They should produce evidence for their allegations, help affected voters establish their eligibility and avoid turning a question of citizenship into a contest of partisan slogans. The right to vote belongs to supporters and opponents alike. It cannot be defended selectively.
Peaceful protest is equally important. When citizens fear that their votes may disappear from the rolls, they must be able to raise their concerns without intimidation or disproportionate restrictions. A democracy that invites people to vote but discourages them from questioning the machinery of elections weakens the trust on which representative government depends.
Ultimately, the SIR controversy raises a question larger than any political party or election: who protects the voter when the bureaucracy makes a mistake?
A democracy worthy of its name must provide a clear answer. It must place the citizen’s right above administrative convenience and ensure that errors can be challenged before they become irreversible injustices.
The words “We, the People of India” at the beginning of the Constitution affirm that the authority of the republic originates with its citizens. The electoral roll is meant to give practical expression to that sovereignty, not to become a barrier against it.
An election is legitimate not merely because votes are counted accurately, but because every eligible citizen has a fair opportunity to cast one. The state must guard against bogus votes without shutting out genuine voters. Otherwise, a process intended to strengthen democracy could end up diminishing it.
An election loses its democratic legitimacy when eligible citizens are denied the opportunity to vote. No government can claim to speak for the people if the machinery of the state shuts some of them out of the electoral process.
Democracy is not merely about counting votes; it is about ensuring that every eligible citizen has the right to cast one. When that right is threatened, the very foundation of democracy is at stake.
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.
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