AA Edit | After SC Backs EC On SIR, Ball In Parl Court

The Supreme Court order upholding the ongoing special intensive revision of the electoral rolls across India as a genuine constitutional process is not just in harmony with its unfortunate approach to the conduct of the exercise but in fact sets a dangerous precedent of looking the other way when the government in power arbitrarily strips people of their constitutional right.

The court’s position comes in the backdrop of a series of litigations questioning the SIR conducted in several states, especially in Bihar and West Bengal. The Bihar SIR started and was completed in a matter of 30 days, which was too little time for many citizens to get their documents ready, particularly in the case of those working outside the state. West Bengal’s was the worst experience, where about 90 lakh voters were removed from the voters’ list. There are about 27 lakh people who were denied their voting rights in the recently held Assembly election there on account of “logical discrepancies” in their document, a term even the apex court found to be inappropriate.

Natural justice demands that a person is convinced as to why a right previously enjoyed by him is going to be denied to him before it is finally taken away. The Supreme Court has now given its stamp of approval to the injustices caused by the EC’s inefficiency. Instead of penalising the floundering authority, it has now punished its victims.

The argument the Supreme Court presents to legitimise a process gone awry is that it cannot be invalidated just because it did not adhere strictly to modalities. It also said that the SIR is in consonance with the Representation of the People Act and the 1960 Rules. It is “intended to secure the constitutional mandate of free and fair elections by ensuring that the roll on which the election rests is accurate and reliable”, the court has stated.

But this is a strawman argument as nobody was questioning the idea in the first place. It is not the first time that such an exercise has been conducted in India. For instance, there were no complaints about the last SIR in West Bengal when it was conducted in 2002.

It is unsettling that the top court in the country makes light of the procedural mandates of such an important exercise. That the law does not prescribe a fixed process for the periodic clean-up of the voters’ list does not mean that the Election Commission has got a free run on deciding who can vote and who cannot. It is the duty of the courts to come to the aid of the citizen when they are faced with the threat of losing a critical constitutional right and unacceptable that the Supreme Court in this case has refused to do so. The Supreme Court is of the opinion that examining questions bearing upon citizenship “must be undertaken with due regard to the presumption operating in favour of an elector whose name is already borne on the roll” but has chosen not to make it binding on the EC. It is a costly contradiction.

Universal adult franchise is the bedrock of representative democracy and the Constitution is the document that guarantees it. The Supreme Court has practically washed its hands of the matter of protecting voting rights. It is up to the Parliament now to ponder over ways to ensure justice for the unsuspecting voter.