Is apex court’s confidence in SIR exercise misplaced?

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s verdict last week upholding the constitutional validity of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), senior advocate Prashant Bhushan described the ruling as a “blot” on the Court, comparable to ADM Jabalpur during the Emergency.

- Ashish Bharadwaj and Insiyah Vahanvaty

The remark was echoed by political activist and petitioner in Challenge to the ECI’s Revision of Electoral Rolls in Bihar, Yogendra Yadav, and reproduced in subsequent media commentary.

The comparison is deliberately provocative. While voter-list revision is not equivalent to the suspension of civil liberties, the analogy captures the frustration caused by rights becoming meaningless when courts do not intervene in time.

To understand the distress that followed the judgement, we must understand the stakes. The Election Commission of India (ECI)’s recent SIR exercise in 12 states/UTs has, so far, reportedly struck off more than 6.5 crore voters from draft rolls (almost 7% of the national electorate, and up to an alarming 19% in certain states) even as the exercise is still underway in several states.

Most of the affected are poor and undocumented, making re-inclusion nearly impossible. What does this mean in practice? In macro terms, it is denial of the right to vote; at a micro level, it can jeopardise access to rations, subsidies and welfare programmes that are linked to identity and citizenship.