CPM calls for a nationwide protest against SIR in Bihar
A statement by the Polit Bureau of the party alleged that the Election Commission (EC) is biased in favour of the BJP-led government and complicit with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in implementing the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls in Bihar.
'The EC, which until now had acted in favour of the BJP-led government, has now become complicit in implementing the RSS or Sangh Parivar agenda. This (SIR) attack on democratic rights, which is sought to be extended across the country, must not be allowed. It is to be noted that even some of the alliance partners of the BJP, like the TDP, have voiced their concerns about the SIR. The CPM calls for protests to be held throughout the country on 8th August 2025 against this anti-democratic exercise of the EC,' read a statement issued by the Polit Bureau of the party on Saturday.
The party further said that the Commission wants to extend this exercise to the entire country-- in the name of revising the electoral rolls-- and is appropriating the authority to verify the citizenship of voters, which is outside its constitutional remit.
'Under the baseless pretext of weeding out foreigners from the electoral rolls, they are disenfranchising vast sections of minorities and other select groups. The entire process is fraught with various violations, and even the right to vote guaranteed by the Constitution may be denied to many," the party said.
"The NRC exercise, which was widely opposed by the people before the Covid pandemic, is sought to be enforced surreptitiously through the back door,' the party added.
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The story so far: The Election Commission of India (ECI) filed a counter affidavit in the Supreme Court on July 21, in response to the writ petition challenging the constitutionality of the special intensive revision (SIR) exercise currently underway in Bihar. The text in the 789-page ECI affidavit is only 88 pages long; bulky annexures run into almost 700 pages. Around 625 pages of these annexures comprise representations received by the ECI from various political parties, along with their annexures. What's the rationale for a citizenship test? The compendium of complaints regarding defects in electoral rolls received by the ECI in 2024-2025 mostly contains those filed by BJP units from Delhi, West Bengal, Jharkhand and Andhra Pradesh. One complaint each has been received from the AAP in Delhi, AIADMK in Tamil Nadu, Trinamool Congress in West Bengal and the Maha Vikas Agadi (Congress, NCP-SP and Shiv Sena) in Maharashtra. A preliminary review of the complaints annexed with the ECI's affidavit reveals that they mostly pertain to typical defects like duplication of names in the voter list, non-deletion of deceased voters, exclusion of eligible voters and fake or fraudulent voter registration. None of the complaints involve the electoral rolls of Bihar, nor does any of the complaints allege instances of illegal migrants from foreign countries like Bangladesh, Myanmar, etc. , being included in the electoral rolls in any State. The complaints, which account for almost 80% of the volume of ECI's counter affidavit, do not provide any evidence or justification for the ongoing SIR exercise in Bihar or a nationwide citizenship test of electors across the country, for which the affidavit vehemently argues. Is it legally tenable? The counter affidavit invokes Article 326 which specifies that 'every person who is a citizen of India... shall be entitled to be registered as a voter', and also Section 15 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 which mandates the preparation of electoral rolls 'under the superintendence, direction and control' of the ECI, to insist on its having statutory authority to undertake a 'de novo' preparation of electoral rolls, requiring electors already registered in the electoral rolls to submit fresh documentary proof of their citizenship. The affidavit also rebuffs the apex court's advisory to include Aadhaar card, the Elector's Photo Identity card (EPIC) and ration card in the list of permissible documents for the SIR exercise. There are several fallacies in the ECI's arguments. First, the SIR process shifts the onus of citizenship proof on all existing electors whose names were registered by the ECI through due process. Another due process is also available for the deletion of non-citizens from electoral rolls on the basis of specific complaints backed by evidence. Have those due processes been rendered dysfunctional by the overwhelming nature of inclusion errors vis-a-vis illegal migrants? If so, the ECI's affidavit should have been able to present precise data on the number of complaints received on the inclusion of foreign nationals or illegal migrants in the electoral rolls of Bihar, and all other States for that matter. In the absence of such evidence, ECI's logic that inclusion in electoral rolls through summary revisions are only provisional and only those added or verified through intensive revisions like SIR have more authenticity, does not hold. Second, the Representation of the People Act, 1950, does not make any distinction between electors added through summary revisions and those added through 'special intensive revisions'. While section 21(3) of the law permits the ECI to direct a 'special revision' for individual constituencies or their parts, the word 'intensive' does not find any mention in the law. The Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 were amended in 1987 to introduce two separate categories of electoral roll revisions, summary and intensive. However, even the 1960 rules do not provide any specific definition or modalities for 'intensive' revisions. The statutory foundation of SIR, therefore, remains fuzzy. Third, the arguments provided by ECI's affidavit in rejecting the Supreme Court's advice to include EPIC, as one of the documents to prove eligibility, contradicts the exemption granted to electors included in the 2003 electoral roll from furnishing any document under SIR 2025 other than 'the relevant extracts of the said part showing their name in the 2003 electoral roll'. ECI's affidavit states that the children of electors included in the 2003 rolls have also been allowed to use this avenue to prove their eligibility. Such privileging of the inclusions in the 2003 electoral rolls, over and above all electoral rolls published by the ECI in two subsequent decades, is legally questionable. The ECI's affidavit mentions that the 2003 Bihar SIR guidelines prescribed four indicative documents as proof of citizenship, namely 'NRC Register where available; Citizenship Certificate; valid passport; or Birth Certificate.' However, a copy of the 2003 SIR guidelines have not been provided with the affidavit. Was there any house-to-house enumeration and citizenship verification for the entire electorate during the 2003 Bihar SIR on the basis of such documentary requirements? How many illegal migrants were detected and deleted from rolls in 2003? These facts need to be ascertained and debated before accepting inclusions in the 2003 electoral rolls as probative evidence of citizenship under SIR. Fourth, the ECI's affidavit asserts the applicability of the contrived citizenship criteria introduced by the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2003 in SIR 2025; whereby (a) Each voter has to submit documentary proof of his/her date and place of birth; (b) For those born between July 1, 1987 and December 2, 2004, additional documentary proof of date and place of birth of either father or mother is required; and (c) For those voters born after December 2, 2004, both parents' date and place of birth are required to be submitted. The constitutionality of this controversial citizenship amendment legislation, which had proposed to introduce a National Register of Indian Citizens (NRC), remains under challenge before the apex court. The rules under this Act were notified even before the CAA, 2003, was passed and notified, casting doubts over its legal status. Most importantly, the Registrar General of India never issued any order to initiate the NRC, as stipulated in the citizenship rules. Hence, the NRC does not exist anywhere in India, except for the State of Assam. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had clarified in December 2019 that his Cabinet had never discussed the initiation of the NRC since 2014. When the authorities statutorily mandated to initiate the NRC and its underlying citizenship scheme apropos CAA, 2003 have decided not to proceed with it till date, can the ECI claim to have any legal mandate to implement the same citizenship test in Bihar, in lieu of an electoral roll revision? What will be the impact? The ECI's counter affidavit has tried to counter criticisms regarding the exclusionary nature of the SIR exercise by highlighting that filled up enumeration forms have already been collected and digitised from over 90% of the 7.89 crore electors in Bihar. The moot point here is that the ECI's affidavit does not disclose the number or proportion of digitised enumeration forms which are accompanied with the required documents. Rather, the affidavit mentions that 'each elector who has submitted the enumeration form with or without documents will be included in the draft roll to be published August 1, 2025.' Thus, the coverage of over 90% of the electors in the SIR process has been attained by postponing the requirement for document submission along with the enumeration forms. The scrutiny of enumeration forms and documents by the electoral registration officers are to commence only after the draft rolls are published. This does not testify for the inclusivity of the entire SIR process. The status of the SIR exercise reported in the ECI's affidavit contains data till July 18, 2025. The updated status provided by the ECI's press note on July 22 is reproduced in Table 1. Till then, around 21.35 lakh (2.7%) electors were yet to receive and submit their enumeration forms. Major political parties of Bihar were officially requested by the ECI to connect with the remaining electors, through their functionaries and booth level agents. Till July 24, around 7 lakh forms were not received. Inability of the ECI in ensuring cent percent coverage through its own machinery of booth level officers (BLOs) and volunteers further exposes the impracticality of the SIR schedule. Moreover, over 53 lakh (6.7%) electors were not found at their residential addresses by the BLOs. While around 1 lakh among them are reported as 'not traceable' and another 7 lakh as multiple enrolments, the numbers of deceased electors at over 21.6 lakh (2.7%) and those permanently migrated at 31.5 lakh (4%), are quite significant. Whether errors are involved in such exclusions can be known only after the publication of the draft rolls. The constituency-wise distribution of these exclusions also remains unreported. The impact of deletion of migrated electors can be substantial if they are clustered within a few constituencies and demographics. Why is ECI not accepting Aadhaar, ration cards? ECI's non-acceptance of the apex court's advisory on including Aadhaar and ration cards in the list of indicative documents rests on tenuous grounds. The ECI's own enumeration form for SIR 2025 seeks the Aadhaar number from all electors, albeit on a voluntary basis. The ECI's affidavit states that statutorily 'Aadhaar is not proof of citizenship', which is specious logic, because statutorily the ECI has no mandate to conduct a citizenship test. In the case of ration cards, the ECI has cited 'widespread existence of fake ration cards' as the ground for non-acceptance. A data table in ECI's affidavit on the coverage of some of the eleven eligibility documents for SIR 2025 in Bihar show 13.89 crore 'Residence certificates' and 8.72 crore caste certificates issued from 2011 to 2025, far exceeding the total number of electors in the electoral rolls. If residence certificates can be accepted as eligibility proof of SIR 2025, despite their total number exceeding Bihar's current aggregate population, how can ration cards be rejected as a document on the grounds of being forgery-prone? Any widely accessible official card or document in a vast country like India with millions of poor and illiterate citizens would be prone to counterfeits — currency notes offering the most common example. Solutions need to be found in plugging systemic loopholes, enhanced vigilance and effectively designed counter-measures. Unless the ECI revises its rigid insistence on citizenship determination, the Bihar SIR exercise is likely to result in a fiasco bigger than the four-year-long NRC process in Assam between 2015 and 2019, which was eventually rejected by all those who demanded it after reportedly spending ₹1,600 crore of public money. (Prasenjit Bose is an economist and activist)
