As there is no satisfactory means of proving a voter’s citizenship retrospectively, identify a prospective exercise to ensure that no genuine citizen gets excluded from the electoral roll or citizenship Not only civil society organisations even officialdom is now openly resisting the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. An assistant electoral registration officer in […]
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Mumbai civic poll is latest theatre of freebie politics
Cash transfers fundamentally alter the relationship between the state and the voter. They create a one-way flow — the government gives, the citizen receives. Gratitude begins to substitute accountability. After years of delay, Mumbai is finally headed for a municipal election. For nearly half a decade, India’s richest city has been governed not by elected […]
Political funding in India is neither fair nor transparent
– An article by Maj Gen Anil Verma (Retd) (Head of ADR) and Ms Shelly Mahajan (Program and Research Manager (Political Party Watch) at ADR) There is a need for intervention to ensure healthy electoral competition and to diversify the sources of political funding. Otherwise, it is always the citizens at large who end up […]
Ajit Ranade: Cash handouts are politically popular but what do they imply for inflation, welfare and fiscal health?
Bihar’s pre-poll handouts were part of a political pattern in India. So what do cash transfers mean for price stability, welfare outcomes and fiscal management? Conditional cash transfers are found to work, but a universal basic income (UBI) deserves consideration too. What happens when a helicopter drops a large amount of cash on a local […]
India’s sunshine law: Clouded by the data privacy bill
Opinion: The SIR in Bihar was a futile bureaucratic exercise
If only a mere 0.1% residents are likely to be undocumented immigrants, as evidenced in Bihar, is there any logic in this retrospective SIR exercise being conducted country-wide and harassing 96.88 crore citizens, asks the author. A tsunami of allegations and counter-allegations has erupted in the mess involving the final electoral rolls in Bihar after […]
When the Election Commission becomes a threat to democracy
Once a constitutional safeguard, the ECI now risks enabling the erosion of India’s democratic norms through partisanship and opacity. The Election Commission of India (ECI) was set up on January 25, 1950, one day before the country became a Republic. So, historically, the ECI predates the Republic of India, which is an important factoid that […]
SIR पारदर्शी नहीं है, न ही यह निष्पक्ष है… पढ़िए ADR के संस्थापक जगदीप छोकर का पूरा इंटरव्यू
24 जून के नोटिफिकेशन में लिखा है कि जो लोग 1 जनवरी, 2003 से पहले मतदाता सूची में थे, उन्हें भारत का नागरिक माना जाएगा। यानी इसके बाद के लोग नागरिक नहीं माने जाएंगे! नागरिक ना मानना बहुत बड़ी बात है। सुप्रीम कोर्ट ने 10 जुलाई की सुनवाई में कहा भी था कि आप नागरिकता […]
Bihar SIR: Doing the right thing the wrong way
Expecting uneducated migrants to fill and upload online forms to enroll as voters is a flight of fancy. The Election Commission still has time to take corrective steps A correct and up-to-date electoral roll is sine qua non for a free and fair election in a democracy. However, given the size, diversity, and geographical dispersion of population […]
