The madness now has a method. The second, nationwide, edition of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls is no longer a knee-jerk solution in search of a problem, an afterthought in search of a rationale, a man-made disaster constantly in need of a coverup. The SIR has seen improvements. A crude instrument of indiscriminate mass disenfranchisement has now been refined into a precision weapon for targeted exclusion.

The latest announcement shows the ECI’s inability, or rather unwillingness, to learn from the experiment carried out in Bihar. As reported in this column (IE, October 7), instead of a quantum jump in the quality of electoral rolls, the SIR has resulted in a worsening in all key respects: A sharp decline in the adult-elector ratio, disproportionate deletions of women and Muslims, and continued presence of glaring inaccuracies (duplicate names, junk entries, bulk voters under one address, etc.) in the voters’ list. Add to it the monetary cost to the state, political upheaval before the elections and the untold physical and psychological cost to poor citizens, and you can see why Bihar was a textbook model of how not to carry out a revision of electoral rolls.

The lessons were there for everyone to see. One, our electoral rolls are seriously defective. Two, the routine exercise of summary revision leaves in too many dead and absent persons and leaves out too many eligible new voters. Three, physical verification through house-to-house visits was, therefore, long overdue. Four, getting each person to fill in the enumeration form within one month, or else lose their voting rights, was unnecessary and exclusionary. Five, the whole charade of........

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