The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has issued the following statement:
SIR Verdict: Body Blow to Democracy
The judgement delivered by the Supreme Court upholding the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls is a travesty of justice. By granting constitutional legitimacy to a process that has led to large-scale disenfranchisement, exclusion, and intimidation of vulnerable citizens in various states, the apex Court has seriously compromised its expected role as the guardian of democratic rights and constitutional guarantees.
The petitioners were seeking an answer to a fundamental question: can the right to vote, the most basic instrument through which citizens participate in democracy, be subjected to arbitrary bureaucratic suspicion and mass documentary scrutiny. The apex court judgement has undermined the principle of universal adult franchise as the SIR led to the deletion of the poor, migrants, minorities, Dalits, Adivasis, landless citizens, and other marginalised sections from the voters list as they lacked the demanded documents. The entire SIR process lacked transparency.
Regrettably, the court has overlooked reports from several states of names of legitimate voters being deleted without adequate notice, burdensome verification procedures and the enormous barriers faced by marginalized citizens.
The introduction of the obnoxious notion of “logical discrepancy” in West Bengal, based on untested software that relied on algorithms, more than a crore voters were classified in the doubtful category. Eventually, 27 lakh who were offered judicial remedy by the SC lost the right to vote.
Unfortunately, the Court has endorsed a regime in which citizenship and voting rights become contingent upon the possession of “acceptable documents”, even while people have been issued Aadhar, voter ID and accessed welfare etc. through other forms of identification, striking at the core of the Constitution’s promise of equality.
Despite categorically stating that determination of citizenship, which is under the purview of the Home Ministry, is beyond the powers of the Election Commission, the broad endorsement of the EC’s conduct of the SIR defeats that very assertion. The court has asked the EC to submit the names of all those deleted through the SIR process to the concerned authority for verification of their citizenship. This move forces all of them to prove their citizenship, which in a way leads to surreptitious introduction of the National Registry of Citizens (NRC) against which the country protested in unison.
The Court has belied the expectation that it would look at the issue in the light of the eroding public confidence in the neutrality and independence of the Election Commission.
The recently concluded meeting of the CPI(M) Central Committee had decided to undertake a countrywide campaign to defend the Right to Vote and demanding comprehensive electoral reforms. The Party will seek to mobilise like-minded parties and forces in this nationwide struggle.