We, people’s movements, peoples’ organisations and citizens from across India, express our deep concern at the undemocratic, unconstitutional and illegal deletions of crores of voters under the guise of Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. We confront the largest ever disenfranchisement in the history of any democracy. We face a challenge to the universality of the universal adult franchise — the foundational achievement of our freedom struggle.

The Election Commission of India (ECI) has weaponised a seemingly routine administrative exercise into an unprecedented and sweeping rewriting of the rules of who can be a voter.

This tectonic shift in the country’s electoral architecture was introduced without a constitutional amendment, without public or legislative debate, and without any change in the statutory rules or even the ECI’s own Election Manual. This has resulted into a double whammy for the people of India. First, the responsibility for inclusion on the voters’ list has been shifted from the State to the citizen. Second, the presumption of citizenship has been overturned. These provisions fly in the face of the letter and the spirit of our constitution, are a case of wanton abuse of law, disregard of the judicial pronouncements and the ECI’s own established norms of transparency, accountability and fairness.

The experience of Bihar stands as a stark warning. The SIR unfolded as a chaotic exercise in bureaucratic overreach that imposed impossible demands on the frontline election staff and needless misery for ordinary people. There is ample evidence that the SIR in Bihar failed every quality test of electoral roll revision: completeness, equity and accuracy. The population–elector ratio declined sharply, resulting in a net reduction of forty-five lakh names from the voters’ list. The burden of exclusions fell disproportionately on the poor, migrants, minorities and women. Meanwhile, inaccuracies in the voters list remained unresolved—duplicated entries, blank records, gibberish data and bulk voters at single addresses persisted.

Yet, instead of learning from this disaster, the Election Commission has chosen to go ahead with SIR in the rest of the country. Evidence from the second phase of SIR shows that more than eleven crore voters now face the threat of disenfranchisement—because they could not submit forms on time, or because they could not trace themselves to an arbitrarily set qualifying electoral rolls of 2002 or 2003. The burden has fallen once more on the most vulnerable, especially women, migrants, dalit, adivasis, nomadic and trans communities and the religious minorities, mainly the Muslims. Again, impossible deadlines have been imposed on inadequately trained and overburdened BLOs, leading to multiple tragic cases of their deaths and suicides.

This runs counter to the consultative and inclusive spirit that the ECI has upheld for decades
and deepens the suspicion that this mass exclusion is being carried out at the behest of the
ruling dispensation. The Election Commission faces a crisis of credibility like never before, as the lines dividing the Commission, the Government and the ruling party have been blurred.

In a democracy voters choose their government. A democracy loses all meaning if the government is allowed to choose its voters. That is the abyss the SIR is leading India into.

Therefore, this Convention demands that:

Continue reading Delhi Declaration: Reject SIR, Reclaim Universal Adult Franchise →