EC ‘Subjecting 2.9 Cr Voters to Rigorous Exercise to Identify Handful Illegal Immigrants': Ex-CEC O.P. Rawat on Bihar SIR

The Wire

4 hours ago

As the Election Commission of India's contentious revision of electoral rolls in Bihar through the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise continues to purify voter rolls and weed out illegal immigrants, former Chief Election Commissioner O.P. Rawat has said that subjecting 2.9 crore voters to this rigorous exercise 'just to identify a handful of illegal immigrants, this close to the assembly elections is not good.'
On June 24 the EC issued instructions for holding SIR in Bihar, stating that the last such exercise was conducted in the state in 2003. The commission, in announcing the house-to-house verification exercise, said that it had been necessitated due to various reasons, among which was the inclusion of 'foreign illegal immigrants' in the electoral roll.
In an interview to The Wire, Rawat who served as CEC from January 23 to December 1, 2018, said that while the exercise being conducted by the poll body will help in identifying illegal immigrants, an intensive revision was not necessary for this purpose.
'For identifying illegal immigrants and purifying electoral rolls of these illegal immigrants, the law provides a very easy solution,' said Rawat.
'Throwing crores of voters (into this exercise) just for identifying a handful of illegal immigrants – that is not good. That's the main issue that 2.9 crore voters are subjected to this rigorous exercise where they feel hopeless just to identify a few illegal immigrants. You can identify them separately and you can do that continuously and law provides that. So, for that purpose going for intensive revision and subjecting crores of people to this kind of exercise this close to the election, I don't think this is good.'
Read excerpts from the interview:
1) This is the first time that the EC seems to be conducting the SIR. The Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, speaks about intensive, summary and partly intensively and partly summarily. The Election Commission's website on the other hand lists a fourth kind, called the Special Summary Revision. Is this a new exercise that the commission is doing?
Under the law there are only two types of revision – summary and intensive. 'Special' is added by the Election Commission when they do not conform to the template of the revision under the law but tinker with certain elements. Intensive means house to house surveys, filling up of the forms by the BLO, among others. Since all those things have been done away with – basically pre-filled forms are being distributed – they are calling it a Special Intensive Revision.
Same thing for summary revision where the general summary revision, according to the law, is that you publish the draft roll and call for claims, objections, applications within 30 days and adjudicate it in 30 days and then publish the final roll. But at times this is not available.
So, they call it a special summary revision and do a truncated exercise. Special is only that much in that if it is not exhaustively having all characteristics of that revision it will be called 'special'. So they are almost the same. Not that much difference.
Questions have been raised about the timing of the Bihar SIR and its proximity to the assembly elections. Is that a cause of concern?
Three months is the time required for any revision. The timeline is: issue order, publish draft, call for claims and objections, hear them and then publish final rolls. In this case, after the final publication before the election, there is a very short window of one and a half months or two months.
That is a cause for concern because whenever intensive revision was conducted in the past, elections were about a year or more away.
So any grievance about exclusion or inclusion could get redressal through an appeal forum. But this time this gap is only 1.5 months. Our appeals fora are not that efficient in that they will dispose of all appeals in two or three days or even 15 days. They may take months. That is why there was panic among the people.
Opposition parties in Bihar have said that a large part of Bihar's population are migrant workers and a lot of this exercise is digital where forms are meant to be downloaded for those who are outside the state. Could this exercise have been conducted in a manner that would ensure their inclusion?
Bihar's migration is of two different types. Major migration takes place after the Kharif crop is harvested, after October-November, and they do not migrate before that. But there are people who have already migrated to Mumbai, Delhi or other big towns but want to keep their enrollment at home.
These people were facing difficulty, so the Election Commission has facilitated them by saying that you can use your phone to upload your enumeration form online and the documents that you want to submit.
Those born after 2004 are being asked to furnish proof of citizenship for themselves and their parents. Is this a departure from the previous intensive revisions?
I cannot compare with the 2003 revision order as I did not have access to it. But earlier intensive revisions had different templates – something added, something subtracted – no two can be similar.
A contentious part of this exercise is that existing electors will also have to prove their citizenship. Is that ordinarily part of intensive revisions?
Everyone has to be verified under intensive revisions. But this time, the Election Commission made a distinction: because time was short, they thought it prudent that all those who find their name in the 2003 roles (when the last intensive revision was conducted) need not submit any proof. They will be deemed citizens and they can submit their enumeration forms along with the reference to the 2003 rolls and that will be good enough.
These people are about 65% which means about 5 crores. But as a necessary corollary, the remaining 2.97 crores they are required to prove their citizenship and this being a very huge number, Election Commission also relaxed this. On July 6, they issued an advertisement in Bihar that even those who do not find their name in 2003 electoral rolls can submit their forms without any document (from the list of 11) which can be submitted later but before August 30. That has facilitated these people.
BJP ally TDP, in its letter to the Election Commission, has said that any future SIR should make it explicitly clear that the exercise is not related to citizenship verification. The exercise being conducted now is alleged to be a citizenship verification exercise and not purification of electoral rolls. How do you see this?
In a way, they are right because in 1995, the Supreme Court said in a case concerning the Election Commission that investigating, certifying or issuing orders about citizenship including deportations all lie in the domain of the home ministry and nobody else has the authority to do these kinds of activities. This was also mentioned during the Supreme Court hearing recently.
There is a slight contradiction here because Article 326 says that all Indian citizens who are above the age 18 (earlier 21) will have the right to vote and enrol in the electoral rolls. Since this Article says 'all Indian citizens', the Election Commission's mandate is to enrol them. Unless they know the citizenship status how can they enrol? But the other side says that the Election Commission themselves – keeping in view the 1995 judgement of the Supreme Court – in their application for enrolment in Form 6 have not asked for any proof of citizenship and have only asked for a declaration (of being a citizen).
And that declaration was taken as proof of citizenship. The Election Commission has the authority that if something is wrong prima facie with the citizenship status they could find out, collect evidence and then take legal action for false declaration. But not for investigating citizenship.
This examination of citizenship in this exercise is a new development compared to previous exercises – that now the burden of proof is on the individual to prove that they are a citizen as opposed to earlier?
That is a fact. The Election Commission always used to proactively enrol people without much ado about citizenship. Even in this intensive revision, Form 6 is being submitted with the declaration being enough. It seems to be a dichotomy that new registration is based on Form 6, whereas all those who are already there on the electoral roll have to submit proof. Since the proof was not available easily and time was running out so the Election Commission themselves relaxed it and said that submit the enumeration form and proof can be given later extending time to August 30. So that is a problem area.
If time (for this exercise) was a year or year and half, there would have been no hue and cry. Time is short, elections are round the corner. These documents cannot be easily procured, as it is also the season of floods and heavy rain.
EC said through sources that illegal immigrants from Nepal, Myanmar and Bangladesh have been found through this exercise. But in 2019, the EC told parliament that only three instances of 'foreign nationals' on electoral rolls were found. Is the purification of electoral rolls going to help weed out illegal immigrants in this manner?
It will help. But for identifying illegal immigrants and purifying electoral rolls of these illegal immigrants, law provides a very easy solution. Collect the prima facie evidence, issue show cause notice, ask for their reply and evidence and if you are not satisfied give them personal hearing and if you are still not satisfied delete their names. This exercise in many states goes on continuously without waiting for any revision.
If you are worried about illegal immigrants, then this exercise should be made standing instruction that every state will continue this exercise of identifying and deleting their names. Because EC does this exercise for identifying migrated voters, dead voters or duplicate voters, by using different software like de-duplication software, photo recognition software – all those things are with the Election Commission and they have been doing it.
Throwing crores of voters just for identifying a handful of illegal immigrants – that is not good. That is the main issue that 2.9 crore voters are subjected to this rigorous exercise where they feel hopeless just to identify a few illegal immigrants.
You can identify them separately and you can do that continuously and law provides that. So, for that purpose going for intensive revision and subjecting crores of people to this kind of exercise, this close to the election, I don't think this is good.