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 Howrah district of West Bengal has resigned in protest against the faulty procedures related to logical discrepancies found in enumeration forms of voters. “As a responsible citizen, I think this kind of logical discrepancies does not make any sense… Therefore, I want to tender my resignation from the post of AERO so that I would have the consolation that I have not betrayed my countrymen and nation consciously,” she said as a reason for her resignation.
Activist Anjali Bhardwaj, in a Right to Information application, had asked the Election Commission for details of the file in which the decision to conduct the SIR was taken. In his reply, the Principal Secretary in the EC informed her that “the decision was not taken by the Commission”. Ms. Bhardwaj says that his reply is evidence that “no files exist on how decision to undertake nation-wide Special Intensive Revision (SIR) was processed and approved by ECI!” So, what was the basis for the EC to start the nationwide SIR?
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The author of this article is Ms Kathiyayini Chamaraj (ADR’s State Coordinator from Karnataka).