We were in Patna when the news channels started reporting on the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) counter-affidavit on the Special Intensive Revision (SIR). We had just finished a day-long jansunwai, a public hearing organised by peoples’ organisations, on the ground experience of the SIR in Bihar. About 250 ordinary people from 19 districts across Bihar, mostly villagers and a majority of them women, had come to Patna to share their stories. Some had travelled through the night in trains packed with kanwariyas and job aspirants coming to the state capital for a major exam. Exhausted, a few snoozed off and on, squatting uncomfortably on chairs. About three dozen of them got to tell their stories to a distinguished panel comprising Justice (Retd) Anjana Prakash, Wajahat Habibullah, Jean Drèze, Nandini Sundar, D M Diwakar and Bhanwar Meghwanshi.

We read news reports about the affidavit late in the evening. And we recalled what we had heard through the day in the multiple languages of Bihar. The first-hand accounts we heard that day and in the preceding weeks had no resemblance to the official account. These two were clearly about two different worlds. The official account attributed to the ECI could well have been a piece of creative writing, a fiction about an imagined land, if only it were written better. On the ground, it has been a month of dystopia.

Phulkumari Devi, a farm labourer from Hasanganj in Katihar, was asked for her photo, a copy of her Voter Card and her Aadhaar Card. (For context: the ECI had dispensed with the requirement of a photograph; EPIC was unnecessary as it was pre-printed on her form; Aadhaar number was “optional” and the card........

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