Close encounter of the SIR kind, but not quite

New Delhi, Sep 4 (IANS) Since the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral roll was initiated by the Election Commission of India (ECI) in Bihar, it has been under attack by opposition parties.

There have been earlier instances of the poll body and the ruling party of the day facing brickbats for alleged collusion. There have been conspiracy charges, like the misuse of the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM), to favour the party in power. But this time, it is perhaps the fiercest battle ever witnessed.

In preliminary hearings, the Supreme Court declined to stay the SIR but suggested that the ECI accept a broader range of identity proofs to allay disenfranchisement fears.

The Apex Court flagged a trust deficit between the ECI and political parties over SIR’s tight deadlines and documentation norms. The Supreme Court also remarked on political parties not helping voters excluded from the draft electoral rolls.

The hearing is currently underway.

An almost similar narrative is rendered in a book which takes a look at the poll process in India.

‘The Power of the Ballot: Travail and Triumph in the Elections’ mentions an incident where the names of aliens were alleged to be present in the electoral rolls. District collectors, write authors Anil Maheshwari and Vipul Maheshwari, had been directed to determine if any person was or was not a foreigner for this purpose.

On September 9, 1994, the ECI directed electoral registration officers to identify and declare the names of foreign nationals and delete them from the electoral rolls.

In a throwback to the recent controversy, an extensive exercise was taken up in 39 polling station areas of Greater Bombay, and as many as 1.67 lakh persons were called upon by the police to produce documentary evidence in support of their Indian citizenship. The High Court upheld these processes.

However, the Supreme Court later found that the names of a large number of persons were being deleted without giving those persons adequate opportunity to present their cases and without disclosing the evidence on the basis of which these deletions had been carried out, say the authors.

It was observed that the time given to people to prove their citizenship was short and that the kinds of documents that were being accepted as evidence were very limited. Those who were called to give such evidence were often uneducated and poor.

The Supreme Court, after taking into consideration a set of guidelines provided by electoral registration officers, issued its own guidelines to be followed in the matter of enrolment and deletion of names of persons suspected to be foreign nationals.

In the end, says the chapter on electoral rolls, all proceedings initiated against suspected foreign nationals were struck down, and it was directed that fresh initiation of such proceedings ought to be undertaken while following the issued guidelines.

The directive issued by the ECI by which certain kinds of documents were made inadmissible as evidence for proving citizenship was struck down, according to the book.

-- IANS

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