Bihar SIR becoming more bizarre each day; ECI adventure gone sour?

Around 58 per cent of the 400,000 (4 lakh) or so objections that the Election Commission of India (ECI) claims to have received during the Bihar special intensive revision (SIR) of voter rolls, essentially asking for deletion of names which figured in the draft list released on 1 September, are by voters who had themselves demanded inclusion of their names in the electoral rolls during the month-long SIR launched on 25 June.

This seemingly absurd proposition is contained in data shared by the ECI itself, political activist Yogendra Yadav alleged in a video statement released on social media on Monday.

How credible, he wondered, can be the claim that those who filled the required forms and produced the required documents for inclusion are now demanding that their names be deleted?

Several of these voters claim in their ‘objection’ that they have shifted and no longer live at the addresses they provided in June-July. Many more apparently want their names deleted because they are registered as voters elsewhere — something they apparently were not aware of when they filled the form for inclusion.

Even more bizarrely, there are a few who claimed their names must be deleted because they are no longer alive. No less strange is the fact that a significant number of objections, ostensibly filed by voters themselves, suggest that they are actually foreigners and hence ineligible to exercise their franchise. What could be the explanation?

Pointing out that the ECI claimed to have received 16 lakh applications for registration of new voters, Yadav claimed in his video statement that of the limited details shared by the ECI (four out of 16 lakh), as many as 40 per cent happen to be older than 25. Several of them are older, with a few being 100 or older, he claimed.

Yadav does provide an explanation. He believes that contrary to the ECI's claim, the forms were not initially filled by the voters but booth-level officers (BLOs). In all probability, the BLOs did not even visit homes, but uploaded details arbitrarily on their own because they were under pressure.

The surge of applications for registration as new voters is from those, he suggests, whose names were arbitrarily deleted and did not figure in the draft roll. The ECI, in order to gloss over its own mistakes, forced them to fill Form 6 and register again as new voters.

There are several other ways in which voters in Bihar are being disenfranchised by the SIR, either because the exercise is hasty and inept due to poorly trained BLOs, or by deliberate acts of mischief.

What else can possibly explain the case of Jharna Das (named as Jhurana Das in some reports)? She lives on the outskirts of Purnea, is approaching 70 and lost her husband last year. She has lived in the same village for over four decades and has been a regular voter. This time, however, her name went missing from the draft roll. Nor does her name and EPIC number figure in the list of deleted voters.

When she approached the BLO, she was asked to produce birth certificates of her parents who are no more, with her maiden home over 100 km away. The document should not have been required as per ECI guidelines owing of her age and her having exercised her franchise in several elections since 1987. There is no certainty, however, that her name will figure in the final electoral roll.

When the ECI announced the SIR, it claimed that it wanted to ensure “no eligible citizen is left out while no ineligible person is included”. By all available accounts, that ambitious goal is nowhere close to being fulfilled. The exercise of SIR is turning out to be an adventure which has gone horrendously wrong.