New Delhi: The upcoming assembly elections in West Bengal will be unlike any other. Not only has the the Election Commission of India’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls resulted in 27 lakh voters being deprived of their right to vote in the country’s fourth most populous state, but also because the country’s highest constitutional court has declined to grant them interim relief.

Unlike the exercise conducted in other states, voters in West Bengal have been required to not just map themselves to the 2002 electoral rolls, but have had to battle a new criteria in the form of “logical discrepancy” which triggered duplicates and name-related mismatches that were amplified further by script conversion and rigid matching rules.

The result has been that 90 lakh voters have been deleted, the electorate has shrunk by about 12% and an alarming 27 lakh voters are waiting for their fate to be decided by 19 judicial tribunals which has so far only decided two known cases. 

With the Supreme Court last week not allowing these voters to vote, experts have raised concerns about how the constitutional right to vote is being suspended, and 27 lakh voters in effect being disenfranchised, due to an administrative exercise that has not been completed in time ahead of the elections scheduled for April 23 and April 29.

“The constitutional principle is  that there is a presumption of citizenship. There should be additional presumption if a voter has voted in multiple elections. Now those presumptions, if they are to be rebutted, the burden should be on the state rather than on the citizen,” said Faizan Mustafa, constitutional law expert and vice chancellor, National Law University, Patna.

“Article 326 provides that every citizen of India is entitled to be registered as a voter. It is an entitlement. It may not be a fundamental right, but is still a constitutional right. Further, there is the principle of legitimate expectation, which the Supreme Court has elaborated upon in innumerable cases. If somebody has voted a particular number of times, is it not their legitimate expectation to be allowed to vote in the upcoming election as well?  We are putting our jurisprudence upside down,” he added.

‘Not a good sign for democracy’

In West Bengal, the SIR exercise has resulted in the electorate in the state shrinking by 11.61% with a total of about 90 lakh voters deleted. An enormous 60 lakh voters were placed under a hurried adjudication process. Of this, roughly 32.68 lakh were found eligible, while 27.16 lakh were declared ineligible. The latter can now approach judicial tribunals for reconsideration. A mere 19 tribunals have been set up to decide on these 27.16 lakh cases, with voting due to take place in less than two weeks.

Deepening concerns of these voters was the Supreme Court’s decision last week to decline interim relief  to voters and not set a deadline for the appellate tribunals to decide on appeals from those left out of the electoral rolls. The court said that the........

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