Setting Stage For Everlasting Electoral Angst

The Election Commission's premise for questioning voters' eligibility en masse dents the credibility of past polls based on the rolls. It's an unconstitutional precedent fomenting perpetual electoral insecurity

- MANISH TEWARI

The Election Commission of India's special intensive revision (SIR) in Bihar constitutes nothing less than a systematic deconstruction of universal suffrage, the sine qua non of democratic legitimacy. This mechanized disenfranchisement, masquerading as bureaucratic rectitude, represents a constitutional trespass. Its jurisprudential malignancy demands not mere critique, but forensic evisceration.

The bedrock of India's electoral democracy is Article 326 of the Constitution. Its language is unambiguous and deliberately restrictive: "The elections... shall be on the basis of adult suffrage; that is to say, every person who is a citizen of India and who is not less than 18 years of age... and is not otherwise disqualified under this Constitution or any law made by the appropriate legislature on the ground of non-residence, unsoundness of mind, crime or corrupt or illegal practice, shall be entitled to be registered as a voter." The term 'shall be entitled' creates an indefeasible constitutional right, placing the burden of disproving eligibility squarely on the State.

This formulation crystallises four immutable principles. First, suffrage is the default constitutional status of citizenship. Second, disqualifications form a closed hermeneutic universe (expressio unius est exclusio alterius). Third, each disqualification requires judicial imprimatur—court declarations (unsoundness), legislative disqualification (corrupt practice), or quasi-judicial residency determination. Fourth, other agencies possess zero delegated authority to invent new exclusion criteria. The SIR commits constitutional lèse-majesté by substituting this framework with a documentary inquisition, transforming suffrage from a constitutional right into an administrative privilege.