SIR in Bihar and SC: An Interim Note

[Sukla Sen]

I. The election process in Bihar on the basis of the the voters' lists prepared via SIR is already on.

Nomination submission, scrutiny and withdrawal for the two-phase poll has closed.

The actual polling on November 6 and 11. Declaration of results on November 14.

II. The case in the SC is also on! 

The legality of the voters' lists being used for the election remains to be decided.

The next hearing is due on November 4. It's not too clear whether it's going to be the final hearing. The final verdict would evidently come only after that.

In the meanwhile, certain interim instructions were issued.

The most important of these is the inclusion of Aadhaar -- despite bitter opposition by the ECI -- as an additional enabling document for enrolment as a voter -- over and above the eleven documents originally listed, none of which not too many ordinary folks are expected to have.

What's important is that whether the twelfth document has been (and, much more importantly, is going to be) treated on par with the other eleven is still not clear.

Hopefully, the Court will be made to come clean on that in the coming days, specifically in the context of <https://youtu.be/iUOgIyEGsW0>.

The Court's (final) verdict will now be relevant, if at all, mostly for the subsequent phases of the SIR -- beyond Bihar.

III. The SIR Phase-II, covering 12 states and UTs has in the meantime been announced by the EC via a press conference.

Certain (marginal?) changes in the procedure vis-a-vis have been made. (The pending Court verdict, when announced, may, or may not, necessiate a few more changes.)

The process would start on November 4 and close on February 6.

(Maharashtra and Assam are not on the list.

West Bengal and Kerala are there.)

IV. In the very briefest, while the goal of the preceding Intensive Revision in 2003 was to enroll as many as voters via door-to-door surveys carried out by the ECI (with no whatever reference to the issue of "citizenship"), which the ECI did in an affidavit falsely claim to have followed to establish legitimacy for the current practice, the aim this time is exclusion, euphemistically tagged as "purification". (That, in Bihar, the claim of "purification" has been found to be just bogus is quite another, though highly relevant, matter.)

V. So, here we find a sort of surreptitious shift from "inclusion" to exclusion". Aimed at effecting a tectonic, even though unannounced, shift from universal adult franchise to some version of limited adult franchise with large arbitrary powers vested in the EC in selection (or deselection) of a voter.

VI. The resultant disenfranchisement of many would most likely pave the path for loss of citizenship itself for a number of them. (In this context, may also look up: <https://frontierweekly.com/views/dec-20/21-12-20-On%20CAA.html>.)

And that may inaugurate a far more vigorous process, accompanied with commensurate drum-beatings etc.

If that comes to pass, that'll be the final requiem for the pluralist democratic "India" that had been brought into being by the epic mass-participatory freedom struggle by unshackling the country from foreign colonial rule.

Peace Is Doable