In the name of democracy and under the guise of protecting the rights of the underprivileged, are certain people pursuing a nefarious agenda?
On May 27, a two-judge Bench unanimously and categorically upheld the validity of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar by the Election Commission of India, declaring that the exercise was constitutionally valid, proportionate and within the ECI’s powers under Article 324 and Section 21(3) of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 (RPA).
The judgement was delivered by Chief Justice Surya Kant on behalf of himself and Justices Joymalya Bagchi, after hearings that ran for nearly 7 months across 29 day.
The SC was responding to a petition challenging the authority of the ECI vis-à-vis the SIR, the validity of the procedure adopted and its purpose. The Court was also asked to comment if the ECI could examine questions relating to citizenship while revising electoral rolls.
The Bench pointed out that Section 21(3) of the RPA specifically contemplates “special revision” in exceptional situations and went on to remark, that the SIR “Breathes life into the constitutional mandate under Article 324 within the precise statutory contours provided by Section 21(3).”
The court clarified that the SIR does not violate provisions of the RPA.
Unable to find any serious lacunae in the Constitutional propriety of the verdict, critics have gone to town with objections that are vague and logically inconsistent; in other words, nitpicking.
Before we analyse the merits and demerits of this criticism it is important to delve into some basic background information that is relevant to the SIR. Large scale migrations, multiple recordings of migrants and voter deaths have resulted in inaccurate electoral rolls despite annual summary revisions which are not as extensive as the SIR. So, it cannot be anybody’s contention that the SIR was not warranted.
In addition, there is one more burning issue that the SIR seeks to address: the problem of fake voters—illegal immigrants masquerading as citizens. This is a pressing issue in the border states of Assam, Bengal and Bihar.
For example, in Assam, the Muslim population has registered an exponential rise: from 24.56% in 1971 to 30.9% in 2001 and 34.22% in 2011. Conversely, the Hindu population has shrunk from 64.9% in 2001 to 61.4% in 2011
The Muslim growth rate of 29.59% in Assam for the period 2001 to 2011 is almost three times the Hindu growth rate, a clear 5 percentage points higher than the average Muslim growth rate (24.6) for the country as a whole and more than almost 12 percentage points above the combined national average growth rate (17.7%).
When the gap in the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) between Hindus (1.7) and Muslims (3.1) actually narrowed in 2011 to 1.4 compared to 2.3 in 2001, it is hard to believe that this skyrocketing Muslim population growth is not due to illegal immigration and increased fertility alone.
A similar story is unfolding in Bengal and the border districts of Bihar and needs to be countered.
These demographic distortions effected by illegal immigration and sustained by vested political parties pose a grave danger to the functioning of our democracy wherein outsiders are being utilized to manipulate the electoral verdict and change the destiny of our nation; the erosion of our territorial boundaries in the Northeast in the future is also a possibility. In this setting the SIR is a necessity and not an option; a procedure to detect and weed out illegal voters-non-citizens trying to pass of as legitimate voters.
Criticisms have to be evaluated in light of this concern.
S.Y. Quereshi, a former Chief Election Commissioner castigated the SC verdict claiming that it “gets the constitutional law largely right—and the ground reality almost entirely wrong.”
But how it gets the ground reality wrong he is unable to explain clearly, resorting to vague conjectures and far-fetched possibilities not rooted in reality. S.Y. Quereshi complains: “The one reliable proof that existed, namely the Elector’s Photo Identity Card, has been trashed in one stroke.”
The Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR), the petitioners in this case also had argued that voters whose names already existed on electoral rolls were entitled to a presumption of citizenship, relying on Lal Babu Hussein v Electoral Registration Officer (1995).
However, the Bench rightfully rejected the contention after extensively considering Lal Babu Hussein. The Court clarified that while inclusion in electoral rolls creates a presumption of validity, that presumption is rebuttable and does not prevent the ECI from undertaking verification.
The presumption of citizenship based on voter eligibility is a dangerous proposition one that has been exploited by vested interests to the hilt—thousands of illegal immigrants have been granted voter cards by fraudulent means, There have been instances of issuance of forged documents to Bangladeshi nationals all across the country especially from Muslim dominated locales. Kirit Somaiya, the BJP leader has alleged “It has come to light that more than 1,000 Bangladeshi nationals have applied to get birth certificates in Bhiwandi alone.” This has prompted the state government of Maharashtra to form a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to look into it.
Last year while hearing a bail plea on fake passport case, Justice Debangsu Basak of the Calcutta High Court observed: “All those Bangladeshi nationals who are coming to this country have Indian Aadhar card, voter card, ration card. … The Bangladeshis make fake passports and enter India and then they make Aadhar card, ration card, voter card.”
To make the voter card synonymous with citizenship in the face of such rampant forgery will be the death knell of our democracy and sovereignty.
Therefore, the Bench rightfully held that the ECI while not the adjucating authority on citizenship, was empowered to undertake a “limited inquiry” into citizenship for electoral purposes with the proviso that the matter be referred in doubtful cases to the rightful authority on Citizenship for a final determination. The Court also added that the cases should be resolved prior to the next Vidhan Sabha or local body elections.
Critics have repeatedly raised the bogey of discrimination against Muslims to undermine the SIR. However when one takes into account that a uniform set of documents is required of all—Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians—it is difficult to comprehend how this is possible.
In the name of democracy and under the guise of protecting the rights of the underprivileged, are political activists and certain political commentators pursuing a nefarious agenda; an agenda that would be scuttled by the implementation of the SIR, namely, the preservation of dedicated vote banks and the establishment of one community’s hegemony over Bengal and Assam, by illegal immigration?
