Bihar roll revision: Will genuine voters suffer?

The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) drive in Bihar being conducted by the Election Commission of India just months ahead of the Assembly elections has raised apprehensions of mass disenfranchisement of genuine voters belonging to weaker sections.

A host of civil society organisation including the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR), PUCL and politicians Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra and Rashtriya Janata Dal MP Manoj Jha, civil rights activists Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav have approached the Supreme Court challenging the revision of electoral rolls.

The Congress Party has aired its suspicion of manipulation in the existing rolls. The fears cannot be dismissed as the Election Commission is yet to come up with a proper explanation for a four million jump in the number of voters in Maharashtra between the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and Assembly elections earlier this year.

The elections are due for the 243-member Bihar Assembly towards the end of October this year. The SIR exercise that began on June 24 is set to conclude on July 25. The revised electoral rolls will be published on August 1.

The Opposition parties’ objections centre around the limited schedule for an exercise that will cover 7.90 crore voters in a state where outmigration takes away nearly six million people to other states in pursuit of livelihood. Farm labourers from Bihar are the mainstay of paddy cultivation in Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir.

Similarly, millions of masons, industrial workers and other low-skilled labour force from the state are employed in Maharashtra and the five southern states. Plantation workers in Kerala are mainly from Bihar. Any exercise requiring their physical presence for verification is likely to lead to deletion of their names from the existing electoral rolls on the basis of their absence.

Moreover, the schedule coincides with flooding in vast parts of the state where rivers descending from the Himalayas wreak havoc and displace a huge number of residents from villages. Curiously, the 11 documents sought by way of proof of citizenship from the electors exclude Aadhaar card, ration card and the MGNREGA card which normally a resident belonging to the lower strata furnishes as proof of his birth, residence and identity and are readily available.

Fears are being expressed that elaborate and stringent documentation being sought under a short and rigid timeframe is all likely to result in mass disenfranchisement of voters from the vulnerable section rather than being an effort towards democratic inclusion.

It is useful to be reminded that the elaborate NRC exercise in Assam spanning over several years and costing Rs. 1,600 crore to the national exchequer came to a nought with hardly any alien being deported.

The exercise is hasty, ill-timed, aggressive and opaque and should be jettisoned. All eyes will remain riveted on how the apex court looks at it as PILs from a host of organisations will come up before it on Thursday.

As of now, it looks like more a covert attempt to disenfranchise genuine voters than include the excluded ones.