Lost Wages, Lost Documents and Rs 100 to Fill Out Forms: Accounts From a Bihar SIR Public Hearing

The Wire

6 days ago

Patna: The Election Commission's special intensive revision of the electoral rolls of Bihar has cost Katihar daily wage labourer Phool Kumari Devi two days' worth of earnings and five kilograms of rice.
'The BLO (Booth Level officer) had asked me for my Aadhaar card and voter ID card, and a passport size photo. I had no photo so I had to travel four kilometres to a photo studio. I had no money, so I had to sell rice I had got through the public distribution system. This meant that I had to stay without food," said Phool Kumari Devi.
She said this at a public hearing organised in Patna on July 21 by several organisations including the Bharat Jodo Abhiyan, Jan Jagran Shakti Sangathan, National Alliance of People's Movement, Swaraj Abhiyan and Kosi Navnirman Manch.
Fifty years old, Phool Kumari is landless. 'I had to miss a day of work because I spent one entire day getting photographs from the studio. I missed another day because I had to get my husband and my forms filled. I lost two days' wages, around Rs 1,000. Imagine the difficulty for us,' she told The Wire later.
Phool Kumari noted that she was relieved that she was able to submit the forms with the Aadhaar and voter ID details that the official had asked her for. Yet the fact is that these two cards are not among the 11 documents that the Election Commission will accept – a decision it has defended in its affidavit to the Supreme Court as well.
Phool Kumari is not alone. In the public hearing, at least two dozen voters spoke of their unique struggles with the rushed SIR.
Rajesh Kumar of Supaul district said that he lost all his important documents in last year's floods. 'Now where will we get documents to prove our citizenship?' he asked.
According to Bihar's disaster management data, around 56 lakhs people were affected by floods last year.
Also read: Explainer: Is Bihar SIR in Line With Basic Constitutional Principles and Settled Election Law?
Many people complained that they were asked for money to get their forms filled. Kanchan Devi is one of them. A resident of Barari assembly area in Katihar district, Kanchan Devi got the information about the SIR from a neighbour one day when she returned from work with her husband Jai Prakash Mandal. 'Our neighbour told us that forms had been distributed already. So we went to the BLO. He told us that we will have to submit our Aadhaar card details and a photo,' she said at the hearing.
The couple did not receive formal education and were not able to fill the forms themselves. They had to pay a person to fill the form on their behalf. 'The BLO said that we will have to pay money, otherwise our forms will not be filled. We told him that we are daily wage earners – where will we get money from? But he didn't listen,' she said. Out of fear that their names will be deleted from the voter list, she took Rs 100 from a neighbour and paid it to someone who filled their forms for them.
Later, she learnt that an Aadhaar card is not among accepted documents. 'We have only Aadhaar card and voter ID card. We don't have any other documents,' she said. She also said that she was not even given a receipt for the form. Most voters at the public hearing, except a couple, said that they were not given receipts.
'63% voters added after 2003 have no documents'
The team from the Bharat Jodo Abhiyan released the outcome of a rapid survey conducted in eight districts in the first week of July.
For this, 709 people of 12 assembly segments were interviewed.
According to the survey report, voters of the 18-40 age group, who were not on the 2003 electoral rolls – an overwhelming majority of 63% – did not possess any of the 11 documents to qualify for eligibility. Most have Aadhaar and voter ID cards.
The survey found that 37% of the surveyed voters did not fulfil any of the two conditions. 'They are thus vulnerable to exclusion from the new electoral rolls,' the survey report reads. On the basis of this, the survey team has calculated that 2.9 crore currently eligible voters may be deprived of their constitutional right to vote. This will hit the young the most as 51.4% of 675 surveyed individuals were added to the electoral rolls after 2003.
What the experts said
After listening to the testimonies of gathered people, the panelists noted how the SIR process is "illegal" and will deprive voters of their voting rights.
Retired Patna high court judge, Justice Anjana Prakash, said, 'Now, every person of the state is suspicious in the eyes of the ECI. It is the Citizenship Act which decides the citizenship of persons but now the ECI is saying that it will decide the citizenship of people. This is wrong. There is no need for SIR in Bihar.'
Also read: Bihar SIR: Election Commission Tells Supreme Court it Has Power to Scrutinise Citizenship
Former commissioner at the Central Information Commission, Wajahat Habibullah, said, 'The ECI is misusing law and the SIR has thrown people in trouble. After listening to the people, I have come to the conclusion that SIR is not only weak in process but it is dangerous.'
Economist Jean Dreze said that an Electoral Registration Officer or ERO will exercise immense power in this process. It is the ERO who will decide whose name should remain in the electoral rolls. 'The process has been fixed in a hurry and the ECI is violating its own Act. There are lots of irregularities in it and it is simply a waste of government machinery."
Sociologist Nandini Sundar observed how the exercise is scaring people and impinging on basic rights. 'The speciality of this country is that all the people, be they poor, rich or any caste, have equal rights of voting. This is the biggest thing freedom has given us. But this process is questioning our citizenship and terrorising the public," she said.
'Forms will be submitted till 25th July and after that ECI will question people. This is the beginning of the game of citizenship and later, voters will fall in trouble. This process must be cancelled," she added.
Economist and former director of the A.N. Sinha Institute of Social Sciences, D.M. Diwakar questioned the whole process of SIR. 'ECI had done summary revision very recently so what is the need of doing this now? If it is being deliberately, then we need to understand the larger conspiracy is being played in the background,' he said.
The founder of Forward Press, Bhanwar Meghwanshi, also demanded the cancellation of SIR and said that it will impact a large population of Dalit, backward and minority communities.