Trinamool urges EC to use 2024 as base year for revision of electoral rolls in West Bengal
👉🏻 Inclusion of ghost voters and duplication of EPIC numbers
👉🏻 Issues surrounding the Special Intensive Revision exercise… pic.twitter.com/CRIB51umsB
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Time of India
2 hours ago
- Time of India
Bihar Polls : Owaisi criticises ECI over voter list revision; rules out joining INDIA bloc
All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen ( AIMIM ) president Asaduddin Owaisi has questioned the authority of the Election Commission of India to determine citizenship of Indian nationals, accusing them of doing "NRC through back door" over the poll-body's decision to Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls ahead of the Bihar Assembly election. Speaking with ANI, Owaisi said. "Who gave the ECI the power to determine whether someone is a citizen or not? Our party was the first to say that SIR is NRC through the back door. " Owaisi also questioned the result of the last SIR conducted in Bihar in 2003 by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like One Click, Zero Threats McAfee Learn More Undo "We demand the number of those BLOs. We will ask our party members to meet those BLOs and ask them where the people from Nepal, Myanmar and Bangladesh are that they are talking about... The SIR was conducted in 2003. How many foreign nationals were revealed at that time?" Owaisi continued his verbal tirade not just on the ruling alliance and ECI but also on the INDIA bloc by ruling out the possibility of joining the alliance and accusing it of suppressing the new leaders. Live Events "One-sided love is not going to happen. The people of Bihar should understand that the accusations that were made against us were based on lies and were made because they do not want a leader of the poor and oppressed people to become their political leadership," Owaisi said while speaking to ANI. They just want you to remain their slaves, to walk behind them with your head bowed," Owaisi added. Owaisi expressed his disinterest in joining the INDIA bloc, citing past experiences and accusations against his party as reasons for his decision. AIMIM Bihar president Akhtarul Iman has suggested forming a third front, which Owaisi seems to be considering as a viable alternative. The MP from Hyderabad has announced that AIMIM will contest the elections, focusing on the Seemanchal region, where the party has a strong presence. Positioning his party as an independent political force, Owaisi said AIMIM is prepared to contest the upcoming elections on its own terms and "form a third front." He said, "We will fight our elections well. Our president, Akhtarul Iman, has said that we should try to form a third front. This was an effort from our side. Everything has come before the people of Bihar for a reason." Bihar Assembly elections are expected to be held later this year in October or November; however, the Election Commission of India (ECI) has not announced an official date. While the NDA, consisting of the BJP, JD(U), and LJP, will once again be looking to continue their stint in Bihar, the INDIA bloc, consisting of the RJD, Congress, and left parties, will be looking to unseat Nitish Kumar. In the current Bihar Assembly of 243 members, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) consists of 131 with the BJP having 80 MLAs, JD(U)-45, HAM(S)-4, with the support of 2 Independent Candidates. The Opposition's INDIA Bloc has a strength of 111 members with RJD leading with 77 MLAs, Congress-19, CPI(ML)-11, CPI(M)-2 and CPI-2.
News18
3 hours ago
- News18
Is Your Vote At Risk? Mamata May Sound Alarm On Bihar-Style Revision Ahead Of Bengal Polls
What began as a solemn remembrance of young cadres of youth Congress, who lost their lives to police firing during a protest demanding electoral reforms in 1993, has now evolved into Didi's informal campaign opener for every crucial poll battle – from Lok Sabha to Vidhan Sabha. This year, as the countdown to 2026 begins, Mamata Banerjee is expected to sharpen her political pitch once again ahead of the crucial poll battle. And, among key issues likely to dominate the state's political narrative, and also her campaign, would be the 'threat" from across state lines – the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar, now tipped to be replicated in Bengal. According to sources in the TMC's rank and file, on July 21, Banerjee will take the stage and raise her speech against the 'discrimination" against Bengali migrant workers outside the state and the alleged attempt by the Election Commission of India (ECI) to 'cancel Bengal's legitimate voters" by 'manipulating" the voter list. With the 2026 assembly election on the horizon, Bengal's most watched political performance later this month will be shadowed by a familiar anxiety – identity, citizenship, and the integrity of the voter roll. The stage is being set for a ticking bomb, which is the apprehension of the Election Commission's decision to bring the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) model to Bengal. The party has already spoken against the possibility that the revision in Bihar may lead to mass deletion of voters over alleged duplication, mismatched addresses, and suspect documentation. Irrespective of electoral-political narratives, Bengal, with its porous international borders, has remained deeply entangled with migration history and its politically sensitive border-districts like Cooch Behar, Dinajpur, Malda, Nadia, Murshidabad and North 24 Parganas have always been on the line. WHY IS SIR AMMUNITION FOR MAMATA? For Banerjee, this is not just an electoral reform or electoral roll revision, it is ready-made ammunition. The last time a similar spectre loomed, during the debates over the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and Citizenship (Amendment) Act debates, she turned it into a full-scale political war. She hit the streets, declared 'No NRC in Bengal" and painted the BJP at the Centre as a party bent on tearing away citizenship from Bengalis, Muslims, Matuas and refugees. That movement helped her reset the 2021 election narrative and counter the BJP's aggressive Hindutva push, to which she lost 18 Lok Sabha seats in 2019. Now, with the EC's SIR exercise in Bihar, the opportunity to revive that sentiment is back. The BJP has often accused Bengal's voter rolls of being 'contaminated", which is seen as code for infiltration from across the Bangladesh border. The SIR could become the vehicle through which those claims are officially acted upon. Already, there are murmurs in border districts and people are anxious about losing voting rights, fearing documentation errors or targeted disenfranchisement. Banerjee, known for sensing mood shifts before anyone else, is unlikely to let this pass. What may even add fuel to this moment is the Supreme Court's recent involvement in electoral roll scrutiny. With judicial backing, the EC is now emboldened but so is Banerjee's potential pushback. She will frame it as an 'assault on Bengal's voters" and 'Bengali identity", furthering her narrative of an 'overreaching Modi government, a compromised Commission, and a hostile judiciary" ganging up on a federal state. CAN SHE REIGNITE ANOTHER CAA-NRC MOVEMENT? The difference between 2019 and 2025, however, is that Banerjee is no longer the political underdog. She is the establishment, which is battling corruption allegations, facing anti-incumbency in pockets, and staring at an aggressive BJP seemingly determined to break her fortress. Yet, if any leader can turn bureaucratic and administrative anxiety into street resistance, it is Mamata Banerjee. Her July 21 speech has never just mourned the past, and this year will be nothing different. It will chart the political roadmap to 2026.
Indian Express
4 hours ago
- Indian Express
Yogendra Yadav writes: Bihar's SIR exercise is a threat to right to vote — across India
While the relief signalled by the Supreme Court in its hearing on the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar can only be welcomed, it carries a serious risk of distracting us from the real issue. Our focus may be diverted to the inclusion of Aadhaar, on revising the impossible timelines of this exercise and on the ground reality in Bihar. All these are real and pressing issues. But exclusive attention to them can cloud the fundamental issue, of significance for the entire country, and indeed for the future of the Indian republic. Unless they are vigilant, opponents of the SIR (including this author) run the risk of winning a battle only to lose the war. Let us not forget what is at stake here. The SIR is not limited to Bihar. Bihar is just a pilot. As this paper has reported ('After Bihar, EC writes to remaining states to prepare for intensive roll revision, qualifying date set', July 13), the ECI has directed that preparations for the exercise begin in the rest of the country, even as the Supreme Court is examining its legality. This is not a revision of the voters' list — it is a de novo compilation of the list. It is, in fact, a rewriting of the rules, procedures and protocols of how the voter list is to be created. At stake here is the foundational principle of universal adult franchise. No matter what relief we obtain in Bihar, unless the entire exercise is annulled, we stand to lose the universality of the franchise. Universal adult franchise was among the core principles of our freedom struggle, formulated in the Motilal Nehru Committee Report of 1928 and reiterated in the declaration of Purna Swaraj in 1929 and thereafter. The Constitution of India incorporated the principle of 'adult suffrage' in Article 326 by stipulating that 'every person who is a citizen of India and who is not less than twenty-one years of age … shall be entitled to be registered as a voter'. Article 5 specifies that Indian citizenship shall be based on birth and residence (not on descent or ethnicity etc). Article 10 protects a citizen against loss of citizenship status by providing for presumption of continuity: 'Every person who is or is deemed to be a citizen of India' continues to be so. In the first 75 years, the Republic of India followed the 'logic of encompassment' in realising this constitutional promise. As Anupama Roy argues in her book Mapping Citizenship in India, the logic of encompassment involved a move towards true universalisation and recognition of all differences so as to extend citizenship status to everyone. There was also, no doubt, the contrary 'logic of closure' at work — of denial, suspicion and exclusion — especially against migrant workers, who continued to be 'residual citizens'. But that logic was never extended to the denial of voting rights. Hence the now-accepted argument in the book Why India Votes? by anthropologist Mukulika Banerjee: The secular ritual of voting has acquired something of a sacrosanct status in India. This did not happen by accident. The logic of encompassment was embodied in laws, rules and institutional practices, all aimed at ensuring that no voter was left behind. First, unlike the US and other countries that require every eligible person to apply to register as a voter, the Indian system placed the responsibility of enrolling each eligible voter on the state. The result: only 74 per cent of adults made it to the voters' list in the US, while it was 96 per cent in India. While individuals can apply for inclusion in the electoral roll, the principal responsibility lies with election officials (now the BLO and the ERO) to contact every adult resident and make sure that no eligible voter is left behind. Second, there is a presumption of citizenship: Every person who appears to be an adult and resides in the locality is presumed to be a citizen and put on the electoral roll unless there are good grounds to suspect otherwise or there is a complaint. Once on the voters' list, a name cannot be removed without the proper process. Finally, as Ornit Shani's celebrated history How India Became Democratic shows, the making of universal franchise required the ECI to take unusual steps. Over the years, the ECI has gone out of its way to evolve protocols for the inclusion of 'liminal' citizens who may have been left out in any routine, bureaucratic exercise: Nomadic communities, homeless persons, sex workers, transgender persons, orphans, undocumented citizens and non-resident Indians. The SIR seeks to reverse the logic of encompassment. It seeks to formalise the logic of closure that would result in graded inequality of citizenship. For the first 75 years, the Indian state failed to convert the promise of 'free and equal membership of a political community' — to recall the favourite words of T H Marshall — from the formal political sphere to a substantive social sphere. As Niraja Gopal Jayal has argued so perceptively in Citizenship Imperilled: India's Fragile Democracy, we are witnessing 'major reconfigurations of citizenship' that would result in 'not the realisation of substantive citizenship but in fact a substantive erosion of even formal citizenship'. The current exercise completes this reversal through multiple, simultaneous moves under the innocuous neologism of 'Special Intensive Revision' of electoral rolls. While it pretends to implement Article 326 of the Constitution, it twists the constitutional intent by disregarding the presumption of continuing citizenship. It is another subtle step in what Jayal identifies as the transition from the jus soli principle of citizenship based on birth and residence to the jus sanguinis principle of citizenship based on descent, ethnicity or religion. The SIR reverses the practices that have ensured the operationalisation of universal adult franchise in India. First, the onus of being on the voters' list has been shifted to the eligible voters. For the first time, all potential voters, with no exception, have been asked to fill out an enumeration form. Otherwise, they don't even figure on the draft electoral rolls. Their being on the voters' list so far is of no consequence, unless they figured on the electoral rolls of 2003. (There is nothing to justify 2003 as a cut-off point, as that exercise did not involve any physical or documentary verification of citizenship status). Second, the presumption of citizenship has been overturned. Now you need to prove that you are not an illegal resident. For the first time, everyone carries the burden of offering documents (either a copy of the 2003 voters' list or proof of birth and residence) that have never been provided to them, and that a majority has no reason to possess. Finally, it seeks to legalise arbitrariness through the absurd provision of an 'indicative (though not exhaustive)' list of documents, which can be changed at the discretion of any local official. In the past few days, the media has finally taken note of the chaos, the tragedy and the farce that the SIR is unfolding in Bihar. Powerful and relevant as these stories are, they must not distract us from the basic design underlying the exercise. The real problem is not just inefficiency and unfairness in operationalising the SIR. The very scheme is malevolent, anti-constitutional and anti-democratic. It must be scraped. The writer is member, Swaraj India, and national convenor of Bharat Jodo Abhiyaan. He has filed a petition in the Supreme Court challenging the SIR
