The unsettling urgency of revising Bihar poll rolls

WHEN the Election Commission of India (ECI) announced a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar just months ahead of the Assembly elections, it set off alarm bells in political circles.The ECI has defended the exercise as a constitutional necessity. Article 326 of the Constitution mandates that only Indian citizens aged 18 or above should be entitled to vote. According to the Commission, the current revision is aimed at cleaning the rolls to ensure this. In this SIR, individuals who were already included in the 2003 electoral rolls are being deemed verified. It is not a small mercy! The ECI has in the past ordered de novo intensive revisions where it found the existing rolls unreliable or out of date (e.g., in 2003-04 in the Northeast and J&K).However, those who were enrolled after 2003 — or who never registered — must now submit a self-declaration of citizenship and supporting documentation such as birth or parental certificates. The stated intent is to update and purify the electoral database. But as with many well-intentioned procedures, the devil is in the detail.The idea of revising electoral rolls is neither new nor extraordinary. In fact, shortly after the 2003 exercise, the ECI undertook full-scale intensive revisions in several northeastern states and Jammu & Kashmir. These revisions, however, were conducted under different circumstances. They were not carried out immediately before elections, nor did they require additional layers of documentation for select voter cohorts. Prior to that, similar exercises had taken place across 20 other states in phases, including Bihar.The SIRs were not only done before 2003, they were foundational to the EC’s voter registration process — especially in large-scale exercises like post-delimitation, conflict recovery or digitisation.The 2003 and 2004 SIRs marked the end of an era — after which annual summary revisions became the norm. Since 2004, no state has undergone an intensive revision by a conscious decision of the ECI, which thought that summary revision with a door-to-door survey was good enough, especially with large-scale digitisation and introduction of photo ID cards.Besides the deviation from the established practice, the timing is what makes the current exercise in Bihar controversial. Undoubtedly, the electoral rolls must be regularly updated — but doing so barely four months before polling in a flood-prone, high-migration state like Bihar is asking for trouble. The concern is not about legality; it is about practicality, desirability and the political optics that emerge from its execution.At its core, this revision shifts the burden of proof onto the voter. Those whose names are not found in the 2003 rolls must now establish their eligibility with documentary evidence. In theory, this sounds reasonable. In practice, however, it risks disenfranchising the very people who are most likely to fall through the bureaucratic cracks: migrant labourers, Dalits, Adivasis, the urban poor, Muslims, the elderly and women — many of whom may not have access to birth certificates or parental documents. Their previous inclusion in the rolls ought to have been sufficient, as hitherto, especially because of advanced digitisation, unless there was clear evidence of fraud or too many duplicate voters.The parallels with Assam’s National Register of Citizens (NRC) process are unavoidable. There, too, the requirement of historical documents led to the exclusion of nearly two million people, many of them poor and marginalised. While the ECI asserts that the SIR is an electoral — not citizenship — exercise, the similarity in administrative burden and anxiety it generates cannot be overlooked.Further compounding the issue is the lack of broad consultation. Opposition parties allege that the SIR was launched without prior notice or discussion. This is a valid assertion. Earlier, the ECI did conduct prior consultations with national and state parties both during the 2002-03 intensive roll revisions across 20 states (including Bihar) and in the 2004 revisions in northeastern states and J&K. In some cases, full de novo revision was taken up only after local political consensus. These exercises were typically not rushed and were often carried out years before elections, allowing time for feedback, public awareness campaigns and party involvement.To its credit, the ECI has made attempts at transparency. It has published the 2003 rolls online and deployed close to one lakh booth-level officers and an equal number of volunteers to help with the door-to-door verification. Very importantly, it has clarified that 4.96 crore voters already on the 2003 rolls need not provide any documents. Remember that they could have ordered a clean slate. It has opened up the process for claims and objections. It has asked political parties to appoint their booth-level agents. These are all welcome steps, but they may not be enough to counter the anxiety created by the timing and messaging of the revision itself.The legal foundations of the SIR are strong. Article 324 empowers the Commission to oversee elections. Article 326 demands that the franchise be limited to adult Indian citizens. Rule 25 of the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, and Section 21 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, support the updating of rolls. Past Supreme Court rulings have affirmed the Commission’s autonomy in these matters. But legal defensibility is not the only metric in a democracy. Moral legitimacy and public trust matter just as much, if not more.The ECI must not only act fairly — it must be seen to be acting fairly. In a climate of deepening political polarisation and growing distrust in institutions, even well-meaning actions can be misread if they lack empathy and clarity. The Commission should consider extending deadlines for documentation. At the same time, since it has announced its intention to do the exercise all over the country, maybe it should consider starting in states where the polls are due only after 2-3 years.In moments like these, institutions earn or lose their credibility not just by citing the law, but by demonstrating wisdom, fairness and care. Bihar’s voters, as all others, deserve clean electoral rolls — but not at the cost of a large number being left out. As the guardian of the world’s largest democracy, the ECI must ensure that every citizen has their right to vote not only protected, but honoured. When voting rights begin to feel like a privilege rather than a constitutional guarantee, democracy itself is diminished.SY Quraishi is former Chief Election Commissioner.

The unsettling urgency of revising Bihar poll rolls

SY Quraishi

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