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The ongoing SIR process raises serious concerns over the manner in which electoral rolls are being revised across states. Karnataka must not be subjected to an exercise that can leave genuine voters out of the electoral process, especially the poor and disadvantaged. Protecting every citizen’s right to vote is essential to protecting our democracy. I call for the ongoing SIR process to be scrapped and a fresh, comprehensive revision of electoral data to be undertaken in Karnataka. The right to vote is the right to live. The Election Commission must safeguard this fundamental right, and the Chief Election Commissioner must resign on moral grounds.

Earlier this month, I searched for my name in the SIR records. It was not there. Instead, I found it on the ASDD list: absent, shifted, dead or duplicate. I am none of those things. I live at the same permanent address. I have a passport issued at that address. Yet I am now required to file Form 6 and ask to be entered again as a voter. This is not a complaint about one name in one constituency. Across India, people are discovering that they have become a problem for the electoral system they were once part of. They must find old records, locate parents’ names in rolls prepared decades ago, obtain documents, visit offices and wait for decisions. This begs the question, once the state machinery has put a person on the roll, why does that person have to prove his existence all over again? My article in Manorama English.

Read “Deep rot,” today’s lead editorial in The Hindu: https://t.co/Jj0HMlMxJr Electoral fraud is not uncommon in electoral democracies. But the SIR (Special Intensive Revision) conducted by the Election Commission of India under the authoritarian and arrogant reign of Gyanesh Kumar belongs to a special species. It is now beyond dispute that the SIR done in several States, and worst of all in West Bengal, has inflicted a grievous and seemingly irreparable wound on India’s electoral democracy. The revelation that Chief Election Commissioner Kumar pushed through decisions related to the SIR without the knowledge, let alone consent, of the two other Election Commissioners shows arbitrariness and lawlessness of the worst kind. The Indian Express must be commended for its investigation, which has exposed how deep and how high the rot has gone into the electoral system. Unfortunately, when the scandal of the ongoing SIR was taken to the Supreme Court of India in the expectation that it would act to uphold the constitutional guarantee of universal adult franchise, the highest court in the land failed the big test. Gyanesh Kumar must resign. An impeachment motion to remove the CEC is unlikely to make headway, given the numbers in the Lok Sabha. If Gyanesh Kumar, with the backing of the Union government, decides to brazen it out, mass democratic protest will be the only way to force him out.

So what does this look like on the ground? Goa has an answer. On January 29, the Supreme Court ordered that voters flagged for "logical discrepancies" during the SIR be heard and allowed to show documents. Goa did that. 649 voters came forward. In 97 cases, the officers on the ground found the earlier decision "has to be reversed" and the names put back on the roll. ECINet didn't permit it. The software had no button to reverse a deletion. ONLY Delhi could add one. (4/14)