Across the aisle by P Chidambaram: To ‘SIR’, with distrust
At the end of last week, the Supreme Court passed two important directions to the ECI on the challenge to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar — publish the list of deletions with reasons and accept Aadhaar for claims. The hearing will continue.
However, there are aspects of SIR that fall outside the scope of judicial review. Some features of SIR are unprecedented and alarming. Firstly, the name: previous revisions were called Special or Summary Revisions. Secondly, the timing: never before had such an exercise been undertaken within four months of a Lok Sabha or state election. Thirdly, the time schedule: the ‘revision’ was done in just 30 days and the ‘objections and claims’ will be disposed of in another 30 days. Fourthly, the scope: unlike previous revisions that kept the last electoral rolls as baseline data and made ‘inclusions’ and ‘exclusions’, SIR scrapped the 2024 electoral rolls and purported to construct new electoral rolls for Bihar (source: former EC, Mr Ashok Lavasa). Fifthly, the strange emphasis on exclusion and the studied silence on inclusion. Finally, the humongous numbers thrown up by the exercise: in an electorate of 7.89 crore persons, the ECI concluded that 22 lakh persons were ‘deceased’, 7 lakh persons were........
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