Ever since the sudden launch of the Special Intensive Revision of the electoral roll on June 25, Bihar has been battling the threat of mass disenfranchisement of marginalised groups and migrant workers. The people of Bihar were quick to sense the danger, and by July 9 tens of thousands of people were out on the streets against Votebandi. The arrogant Election Commission which had fixed 25 July as the last date for submission of documents along with enumeration forms was compelled to go slow on documents, extending the time limit till the end of August. In spite of delinking the house-to-house enumeration phase from mandatory submission of supporting documents, 6.5 million forms were reportedly not submitted and hence deleted from the draft rolls. It is not difficult to imagine how many more million electors would have found themselves out of the draft rolls if the EC were to stick to the original schedule of SIR.
The battle against disenfranchisement in Bihar has started receiving significant support from the independent media as well as sections of the print media. And in the wake of Rahul Gandhi's press conference exposing large-scale irregularities in the electoral roll in Mahadevpura assembly segment of Bengaluru Central constituency, the Bihar battle against disenfranchisement has also grown into a nationwide campaign against vote chori or election fraud. Meanwhile, the case against the SIR is also being heard in the Supreme Court and the arguments in the legal arena concerning the very unconstitutional nature of the SIR and the gross errors being committed in the course of its farcical execution are all helping the public see through the design of disenfranchisement built into the SIR process. In particular, the fact that the Supreme Court had to insist on acknowledging Aadhar cards as a valid document, as the Election Commission’s list of acceptable documents contained none of the proofs of identity usually accessible to the poor and marginalized, laid bare the targeted nature of the disenfranchisement drive.
Even though the Supreme Court has till now only concerned itself with the practicalities of the exercise, the scrutiny of the court and the stubborn reluctance and even refusal of the Election Commission to accept the basic tenets of reason and transparency are all helping awaken the public to the very real danger of disenfranchisement. Add to this the remarkable mass response to the Voter Adhikar Yatra launched by the INDIA alliance, the desperate attempts being made by the BJP camp to justify the SIR by invoking the bogey of foreign infiltration and the Election Commission's refusal to respond to the growing evidence of electoral fraud and attempts to evade and suppress all scrutiny by changing laws and intimidating critics, and we can see the reassuring rise of a powerful mass awakening in Bihar against the collusive alliance of the Modi government and the Election Commission.
The SIR exercise has exposed how the EC is abdicating its constitutional responsibility of ensuring an accurate and inclusive electoral roll by transferring the onus to the elector. And now when the anomalies and inaccuracies are being exposed all too glaringly, the EC is trying to trivialise the errors and transfer the responsibility of correction to the political parties and their booth level agents (BLAs). The daily updates being issued by the EC regarding the ongoing post-enumeration phase of claims and objections (1 August - 31 August) prominently highlight the 'fact' that no complaints are being filed by the BLAs of recognised political parties in Bihar. What the EC does not tell us is that it took a Supreme Court directive to eventually force a reluctant EC to share clear lists of deleted voters which became available only on 18 August. The EC which did not consult political parties before launching the SIR and deleting names on a mass scale now accuses political parties and their BLAs of indifference and inaction!
By treating BLAs as the exclusive proxy for political parties and making the whole process of lodging complaints extremely complex and cumbersome, the EC is trying to discredit the battle against disenfranchisement as empty political rhetoric without any real supporting evidence. But the dedicated and determined teams of CPI(ML) cadres and civil society activists have refused to give in to the bureaucratic hurdles. Among all recognised political parties of Bihar, it is only the CPI(ML) team of BLAs which has succeeded in getting a dozen complaints filed against all odds, even as hundreds of BLAs appointed by the CPI(ML) are yet to be officially 'approved' and 'acknowledged' by the Election Commission. With the help of civil society activists, trade unions and various other locally active groups of citizens, we also succeeded in reaching out to nearly half a million deleted voters and migrant workers across Bihar and beyond and assisting them in the process of filling out of forms and submission of relevant documents. In contrast, the BJP which boasts of the biggest army of BLAs numbering around 60,000 has tellingly filed not a single complaint through its network of BLAs. Are we to assume that the BJP lost not a single voter in the course of mass exclusion of electors through the SIR?
With a week left in the period earmarked for submission of documents and claims and objections, the EC has declared that 98.2% electors have submitted their documents. While the figure sounds surprisingly high, we must remember that these documents are yet to be verified. And even 2% electors whose documents are yet to be submitted would number around 1.5 million. We do not know how many of the 6.5 million voters who have been deleted in the first phase - most of them unjustly, especially those marked 'permanently shifted' - will be reinstated in the final list. Many of those who have submitted their documents may still face unjust deletion in the course of 'verification' of documents. And then there is the issue of enrolment of ‘new voters’ - there are already signs of the Mahadevpura pattern at work in Bihar too.
The danger of disenfranchisement and electoral fraud therefore still looms large and Bihar can only overcome this danger by exercising greater vigilance at every step of the electoral process over the next few weeks. The Voter Adhikar Yatra has sent out a loud message against electoral fraud across Bihar and beyond and now the battle has to be taken forward to dethrone the utterly discredited Modi-Nitish 'double engine' dispensation.
