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Indian Express
5 days ago
- Politics
- Indian Express
TDP's alliance Dharma: Its conscious decision to ask questions about Bihar SIR deserves national attention
When I first came across the letter written by the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) to the Election Commission of India (ECI) regarding the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar, I experienced a sense of both relief and introspection. Relief, because amidst the mounting discomfort around the voter list revision, at least one member of the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) had the courage to address the growing anxiety with democratic tact. Introspection, because it reminded me how, in a time when public institutions often appear rigid and political responses either defensive or dismissive, a single, measured intervention can bring clarity to a national concern. The voter list is not just an administrative ledger; it is the foundation upon which democratic representation stands. The moment we start treating it as a mere bureaucratic formality, we risk undermining the essence of electoral democracy. The recent SIR in Bihar, launched by the ECI ostensibly to clean the rolls of duplicate, deceased, or ineligible voters, has done precisely that — shifted the focus from inclusion to suspicion. In a state already struggling with socio-economic vulnerabilities, the ECI's decision to initiate a sweeping review sent ripples of concern across civil society and political circles alike. More than 35 lakh voters have reportedly been flagged for possible deletion. That number is not just a statistic — it represents real people, many of whom come from marginalised, migrant, or minority backgrounds. Entire regions feel the weight of uncertainty: Will their names remain? Will they be asked to prove their belonging again? In this moment of democratic ambiguity, what stood out was the intervention by the TDP, not as an act of rebellion, but as a responsible appeal from within the governing coalition. The TDP did not question the ECI's authority. It did not allege partisanship. Nor did it retreat into silence to preserve the appearance of alliance unity. Instead, it positioned the SIR not as a battleground but as an opportunity, an occasion to review, reflect, and reform the systems that underpin our elections. In doing so, the TDP remained true to what can be called the spirit of 'Alliance Dharma,' not as passive compliance but as active responsibility. The party's letter raised several crucial concerns. It rightly questioned why voters whose names already appear in the certified electoral rolls should have to re-establish their eligibility without any specific, verifiable objection. In a functioning democracy, prior inclusion should carry a presumption of validity. This is not just political common sense — it is a legal precedent, affirmed by the Supreme Court in the 1991 Lal Babu Hussein vs Electoral Registration Officer judgment. The TDP's invocation of this case shows its intent was not merely procedural but principled. Also, I absolutely agree that any voter revision exercise must be especially sensitive to migrant workers, tribal populations, the elderly, and homeless citizens. These are the groups who often fall through the cracks of documentation, not because of fraud or deception, but due to systemic neglect. There must be a substantive roadmap for reform. We can use AI-based tools to flag duplication or detect deceased voters, and encourage Aadhaar-linked verification mechanisms with robust data privacy protections. There is also a need for annual third-party audits of the electoral roll, ideally under the Comptroller and Auditor General. Most importantly, electoral deletions should not occur without prior notice, a reasoned order, and an opportunity for response. In doing so, we will not only defend the dignity of voters and their rights but also provide a blueprint for institutional transparency. In an environment where ruling parties often avoid internal dissent for fear of appearing divided, the TDP chose the harder path. It demonstrated that alliance loyalty does not mean silence, and that governance is enriched, not weakened, by respectful critique from within. In fact, one could argue that it is precisely because the TDP is part of the NDA that its concerns deserve greater attention. If a partner within the ruling coalition is raising red flags, shouldn't the lead party pause and listen? As the primary force in the NDA, it has a responsibility not only to lead with electoral strength but also to safeguard democratic fairness. The fact that a partner had to step up and voice what millions were silently fearing indicates a deeper disconnect between power and participation. If voter lists are being weaponised — whether intentionally or inadvertently — to exclude citizens under the guise of reform, then the damage is not limited to Bihar. It is a national question, one that demands answers at the highest levels. We should also be clear: This controversy is not about rejecting reform. Electoral rolls do require periodic revision. Fraudulent entries must be addressed. But the method matters. A reform that bypasses transparency, burdens the most vulnerable, and fails to consult key stakeholders risks turning a constitutional exercise into a democratic setback. What the TDP has done is remind us that reforms must be participatory, not punitive; corrective, not coercive. There's a broader lesson in all this. Political parties, especially those in government, often find it difficult to question the system they are part of. But democracy demands a different kind of maturity. It asks political actors to balance loyalty with integrity, and governance with humility. As a teacher of political science, I often tell my students that the health of a democracy is measured not just by how power is gained, but by how institutions respond to power's overreach. The electoral roll may seem technical. But when it begins to decide who counts and who doesn't, it becomes the frontline of democratic justice. It is now up to the EC to respond with clarity, and for the ruling party to recognise that silence is not neutrality. In a democracy, silence — especially from those in power — often amounts to complicity. If the voter list is to be more than a list of names, if it is to reflect the will and dignity of the people, then it must be built with care, consultation, and constitutional integrity. Let us learn from the TDP — not just how to govern, but how to stand up for the governed. The writer is Professor of Political Science, Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad
Time of India
15-07-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
BJP ally TDP seeks clarity on SIR, says exercise shouldn't link to citizenship or burden voters
Live Events (You can now subscribe to our (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel New Delhi: Taking a contrarian view on the Special Intensive Revision ( SIR ) of electoral roll , key NDA ally Telugu Desam Party ( TDP ) said the purpose of the exercise should be clearly defined and delinked from citizenship verification , wrapped up at least six months before elections and the burden of proof should not be on the a four-page representation submitted to the Election Commission of India (ECI) on Tuesday, TDP sought clarity on the SIR's purpose -- a move seen as a guarded way of questioning the on-going exercise in openly criticising SIR, TDP has made four submissions which are against the current approach of ECI. TDP, whose 16 MPs provide crucial support to BJP-led NDA government at the Centre, has sought clarity on the "scope of SIR" and wants it to be completely delinked from the citizenship question. "The purpose of SIR must be clearly defined and limited to electoral roll correction and inclusion. It should be explicitly communicated that the exercise is not related to citizenship verification, and any field instructions must reflect this distinction," reads the TDP representation. It said adequate time should be given for such an exercise and it should take place "ideally not within six months of any major election". This is contrary to what is underway in Bihar, where a new assembly will be in place by November-end and SIR is underway with elections just three months documentation, TDP stated, "Voters who are already enrolled in the most recent certified electoral roll should not be required to re-establish their eligibility unless specific and verifiable reasons are recorded." TDP has sought to make a distinction between intensive roll revision and electoral roll revision and suggested that the last electoral roll revision be made the base year. This means that for Bihar it should be the electoral roll revision of January 2025 which should be the base year, not 2003. It cited a Supreme Court judgement in Lal Babu Hussein vs Electoral Registration Officer to say "prior inclusion created a presumption of validity and any deletion must be preceded by a valid inquiry."In the Bihar SIR, the ECI sought proof and asked voters to fill a form to ensure inclusion. However, TDP representation said: "The burden of proof lies with ERO or objector, not the voter, especially when the name exists on the official roll".
The Hindu
07-07-2025
- Politics
- The Hindu
A regime of suspicion
In 1994, residents of Greater Bombay in Maharashtra and those of Paharganj and Matia Mahal in Delhi found their names deleted from the electoral rolls. The apparent reason was the respective electoral registration officers' suspicion that they were non-citizens and therefore ineligible to vote. When the matter reached the Supreme Court, a three-judge Bench said such suspicion must be based on material evidence, which ought to have been furnished to the voters whose names were being deleted, along with an opportunity to be heard. Most important, in its 1995 judgment in Lal Babu Hussein, the Supreme Court held that if the names of such persons were included on the electoral rolls in the previous election, it would ordinarily imply that due verification had taken place prior to their inclusion. This presumption arose from the court's trust that official acts carried out under provisions of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 and the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 were regularly performed. The 1994 instance was a limited malaise, targeting approximately 1.67 lakh individuals in specific pockets of Greater Bombay and a few polling stations in Delhi. Thirty-one years later, the Election Commission appears to be re-enacting this practice, but on a different scale in Bihar, just ahead of the Assembly election. The commission's order dated June 24, 2025 mandates that all voters enrolled after 2003 submit proof of Indian citizenship, without any specific allegation or evidence of impropriety. Even more discomforting is that the justification offered is not suspicion of infiltration or fraud but merely that 'significant change in electoral rolls has taken place' over the past two decades. Upon widespread criticism of the move, while the Election Commission has emphasised that individuals whose names were included on the 2003 electoral rolls would only need to submit an extract thereof, the reality is that a significant number of voters were enrolled after 2003. These individuals are now being asked to submit proof of their birth in India. Moreover, anyone born after 1987 is required to furnish proof of their parents' citizenship as well. For example, a person born in the 1990s would not have been included on the 2003 electoral rolls, but may have been included on subsequent rolls. Even such a person would now be required to submit proof of citizenship as his previous inclusion is being ignored. In effect, the Election Commission is undermining its own electoral rolls and elector photo identity cards (EPICs) issued since 2003 — documents that have been used in five Lok Sabha and as many Assembly elections in Bihar, not to mention multiple byelections. The implication is that these official records are no longer considered reliable by the very institution that created them. This institutional self-disavowal is not just bureaucratically absurd — it is unconstitutional in the same breath. Moreover, the commission seems to have forgotten the fact that testing citizenship or requiring proof thereof is not within its statutory remit, making the entire exercise devoid of any statutory backing. Equally alarming is the shifting of the burden of proof. Under the 1950 Act and the 1960 Rules, the standard requirement is a declaration of citizenship by the voter. However, the current exercise demands documentary proof of citizenship. This represents a fundamental departure from the law, and conveniently flips the burden of proof onto the voter. In Lal Babu Hussein, the Supreme Court emphasised that material evidence and an opportunity to be heard must precede any move to question a person's citizenship. Here, however, the presumption is reversed: every voter is treated as a potential non-citizen unless proven otherwise. This reversal is starkly evident in the commission's June 24 order, which states unambiguously that 'the EROs shall treat the electoral roll of 2003 with qualifying date of 01.01.2003 as probative evidence of eligibility, including presumption of citizenship, unless they receive any other input otherwise'. This shift in burden is especially problematic because no such requirement exists in the Citizenship Act, 1955. Under Section 3, persons claiming citizenship by birth are not required to make any application or obtain certification to prove their citizenship — unlike those seeking citizenship by registration or naturalisation. The EC's order thus seems to import into the electoral process a regime of suspicion that even the citizenship law does not envisage. Chilling effect Another concerning aspect of this entire exercise — which demands herculean compliance in a very short span — is its likely chilling effect on voter participation. In a State like Bihar, which already witnesses low voter turnouts, an exercise like this, coupled with the threat that anyone suspected of being a foreigner will be referred to the competent authority under the Citizenship Act, 1955, will most severely affect the most marginalised and underprivileged. Faced with the prospect of producing documents, engaging with bureaucracy, and being subject to the discretion of a booth-level officer, many may simply opt not to vote at all. Elections must empower citizens. But this exercise flips that ideal: instead of the state proving someone is ineligible to vote, the citizens must now prove they are eligible — a reversal that strikes at the very heart of universal adult franchise. What is unfolding in Bihar can be a cause of concern for those outside Bihar as well. As the June 24 order makes it abundantly clear, the exercise is being undertaken in Bihar in view of the upcoming elections and is actually envisaged for the entire country. If such an exercise — with no statutory backing, no suspicion, and no individualised inquiry — is replicated at the national level, it will amount to mass disenfranchisement by non-inclusion of those failing to submit required documents and by non-participation in the exercise due to the chilling effect it creates. This will normalise distrust toward vast swathes of the population, especially the poor, minorities, and the marginalised — groups that historically have had to struggle for recognition in the democratic process. That such a revision is taking place months before a State election, rather than during the regular annual summary revision cycle under Section 21 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, only deepens concerns of constitutional violations and political intent. The right to vote is a constitutional guarantee, a key facet of India's democratic framework and rooted in the principle of universal adult suffrage. It is not a privilege contingent on paperwork or pedigree, but a core mechanism through which citizens of all walks of life participate in governance and hold the state accountable. Dangerous precedent By imposing evidentiary burdens on millions of voters without specific allegations or due procedure, the Election Commission's actions in Bihar risk undermining decades of democratic progress. This exercise does not merely revise electoral rolls — it reshapes the relationship between the citizen and the state. It, therefore, sets a dangerous precedent. It is this same exercise of doubting a voter's citizenship without any material that had resulted in the judgment in Lal Babu Hussein. It seems the Election Commission has now found a way to circle around the judgment by not alleging any individual voter to be non-citizen but rather presuming all persons to be potential non-citizens under the garb of an innocuous statement that it is merely revising the rolls and in doing so it must ensure that only citizens are included. This makes the elections in Bihar an example of conditional democracy and not a constitutional one. (Fuzail Ahmad Ayyubi is an advocate-on-record practising at the Supreme Court; views are personal)
The Hindu
22-04-2025
- Politics
- The Hindu
A move that endangers the right to vote
The Election Commission of India (ECI)'s renewed push to link Aadhaar with voter ID endangers the right to vote. It is being justified as a measure to clean electoral rolls, eliminate bogus voters, and improve electoral integrity. Yet, experience and data show that Aadhaar linkage has resulted in mass disenfranchisement, systemic errors, exclusions, arbitrary welfare disentitlements, and far-reaching infringements on the fundamental right to privacy of citizens. Questionable claims The claim that Aadhaar-voter ID linkage is voluntary is questionable. Presently, Form 6B offers no meaningful opt-out — voters must either submit their Aadhaar number or declare they do not have one, coercing even those unwilling to share it into compliance. Unsurprisingly, by September 2023, over 66 crore Aadhaar numbers had already been seeded. This was enabled not only by a coercive legal framework but also by data-sharing practices of questionable legality and constitutional, ethical propriety. These included the use of the DBT Seeding Data Viewer, which permits third-party access to non-biometric identity data held by UIDAI, as well as the repurposing of data collected for the National Population Register and by other government departments for unrelated administrative purposes. The ECI's latest proposal fails to rectify this position. On the contrary, it makes the process more restrictive by requiring citizen-voters who do not provide Aadhaar to physically appear before an Electoral Registration Officer to justify their decision. In 2023, in G. Niranjan v. Election Commission of India, the ECI had assured the Supreme Court that Aadhaar-voter ID linkage is not mandatory and that appropriate clarifications would be introduced for that purpose; its latest proposal walks back on this commitment. The new proposal also erodes the commitment to universal and equal suffrage by imposing barriers on those unwilling or unable to furnish Aadhaar. It places a disproportionate burden on the elderly, persons with disabilities, migrant workers, and individuals in remote areas for whom attending an in-person hearing before the Electoral Registration Officer is often neither practical nor reasonable. This not only compromises individual dignity but also diminishes the trust that is foundational to democratic participation. The problem is further exacerbated by the lack of a clear, accessible, and time-bound appellate mechanism for the citizen-voter, if their justification for not submitting Aadhaar is arbitrarily rejected. The Supreme Court, in Lal Babu Hussein and Others v. Electoral Registration Officer (1995), unequivocally held that any decision to delete a name from the electoral roll must comply with the principles of procedural fairness and natural justice. The Union government and the ECI argue that Aadhaar-voter ID linkage will eliminate duplicate voters and electoral fraud. However, this claim does not withstand scrutiny. Aadhaar was never designed to serve as proof of citizenship. Section 9 of the Aadhaar Act, 2016, explicitly states that Aadhaar is a residency-based identification system, which means that an Aadhaar holder may not necessarily be an Indian citizen. Multiple High Courts have ruled that Aadhaar is not proof of Indian citizenship. The UIDAI itself has affirmed that even non-citizens residing in India for 182 days are eligible for Aadhaar. Importantly, the Supreme Court in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India (2018) had limited the use of Aadhaar for welfare programmes paid out of the Consolidated Fund of India per Section 7 of the Aadhaar Act, 2016. By linking Aadhaar with the voter ID, the ECI is creating a mechanism that introduces an unreliable filter into the electoral process, risks mass disenfranchisement of citizen-voters, and eroding the sanctity of universal suffrage and democratic participation guaranteed by the Constitution. These dangers are not hypothetical; they have been documented. In 2015, the ECI attempted a similar Aadhaar-voter ID linkage under the National Electoral Roll Purification and Authentication Programme. As a result, in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh alone, 55 lakh voters were arbitrarily removed from electoral rolls due to Aadhaar mismatches. Voters discovered their names missing only when they arrived at polling stations on election day. The ECI was forced to abandon the exercise after the Supreme Court issued a stay through its August 11, 2015 order. Aadhaar-voter ID linkage also poses a severe risk of dragnet surveillance and voter profiling. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, contains sweeping exemptions for government entities, raising the possibility that voter data could be accessed and exploited for political purposes. Once Aadhaar is linked to voter IDs, it becomes possible to cross-reference electoral data with other databases, allowing ruling parties to monitor voter demographics. The implications are concerning. Political actors could use this data to micro-target voters, suppress opposition strongholds, or even manipulate electoral rolls to achieve predetermined electoral outcomes. Seeding Aadhaar with electoral roll data subverts core principles of constitutional design. The ECI, vested with the powers of 'superintendence, direction and control' over elections, is a constitutionally independent authority. In contrast, the UIDAI is a statutory body operating under executive control — bound by government directives under Section 50 of the Aadhaar Act, 2016, and subject to supersession under Section 48. Entrusting it with electoral data undermines the separation of powers, jeopardising the integrity of the electoral process and the democratic ideal of free and fair polls. A further defect lies in the inherent unreliability of the Aadhaar database. The 2022 Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) Performance Audit Report No. 24 of 2021 identified major deficiencies, including the cancellation of over 4.75 lakh Aadhaar numbers due to their duplication and issuance based on faulty biometric data. The CAG also found no assurance that all Aadhaar holders qualify as 'residents' under the Aadhaar Act, as UIDAI had not prescribed any specific proof, document, or process to verify an applicant's period of residence in India. Relying on such an error-prone database for de-duplicating the electoral rolls would lead to wrongful deletions and exclusions. Methods of electoral verification Instead of pushing a technological fix and infringing on the right to privacy of citizens, the ECI must focus on strengthening traditional, time-tested methods of voter verification. Regular door-to-door verification by booth level officers; comprehensive, independent audits of electoral rolls; and functional public grievance redressal frameworks are more effective and constitutionally sound approaches to addressing concerns about alleged duplicate or fraudulent entries. Introducing independent oversight through social audits would further enhance accountability and prevent politically motivated manipulations of electoral rolls. The right to vote is a constitutional guarantee. Any policy that imposes unreasonable burdens on citizen-voters, introduces unreliable verification mechanisms, or enables political profiling must be abandoned. The Aadhaar-voter ID linkage does all three. That such a constitutionally fraught scheme has found support across the political spectrum is troubling. John Simte, Lawyer and legal researcher
