WHO IS A CITIZEN?

A NATIONWIDE SPECIAL INTENSIVE REVISION OF VOTER ROLLS STARTING FROM BIHAR STIRS CONTROVERSY AROUND IDENTITY AND EXCLUSION

- By KAUSHIK DEKA | Photograph by RANJAN RAHI

ON September 10, the Election Commission of India (ECI) convened chief electoral officers from across the country to discuss the preparation of a nationwide Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, a bureaucratic exercise it insists is about “cleaning up” voter lists, but which critics say cuts to the core question: who counts as a citizen in India? The ECI had announced this initiative in June, and is already implementing it in poll-bound Bihar. Now it is beginning to move its levers to extend the exercise across India, before assembly elections scheduled early next year in five states. “The ECI is afraid the poll process would be misled by fake votes in the name of dead voters, permanently migrated voters, duplicate voters, fake and foreign voters,” Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar had declared following the launch of the SIR in Bihar. “That is why this revision has been launched in Bihar and will be taken to the entire country. Should the Election Commission not weed out such voters?”