The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls continues to throw up absurd voter deletions although the hurly burly of imminent elections has passed and there is no longer the excuse of lack of time.
More seriously, the scrubbing exercise is slowly giving us a glimpse of what it is really designed for: disenfranchisement leading to disempowerment. In the worst-case scenario, anyone who falls foul of this saturnine regime in New Delhi risks becoming subject to its tender mercies under threat of losing citizenship rights and privileges, or, at the very least, becoming a plaything in the hands of clerks at work in the dark labyrinth of the Election Commission of India (ECI).
The latest absurdity to arise from SIR relates to the denial of passport renewal to the former editor of the Telegraph newspaper, R Rajagopal, a journalist of long standing and repute. In the SIR conducted ahead of the recent elections in West Bengal, his name was removed from the electoral rolls despite his long record of voting in past elections and 25 years of uninterrupted stay at his present Kolkata address.
He appealed the removal, furnishing relevant documents, including his passport, residence proof, matriculation certificate, etc., as well as particulars regarding his parents, both distinguished professors. While his case dragged on before the tribunal that is presently considering 60 lakh voter names placed ‘under adjudication’ in that state, he applied to renew his passport. He has been denied because his name does not figure in the voter list.
This is the classical dog-chasing-its-tail situation that the Indian bureaucracy loves to subject people to—one piece of paper claiming it has no life without the other and vice versa. SIR has thrown up tons of arbitrary exclusions countrywide but none weirder than this.
The ECI has quibbled over the age of Amarya Sen’s mother, questioned the voting rights of the family of painter Nandalal Bose who illustrated the first copy of the Constitution, and struck off the names of its own staffers—all cases in which amends were duly made. But the Rajagopal case packs all the Catch-22 menace of a disenfranchisement design:
You can’t have a passport because you’re not a voter; and you can’t vote if you’re not a citizen; and if you claim to be a citizen, where’s your passport?
For everyman, the real danger of this diabolical game is that other agencies can join in too: The Aadhaar babus, the welfare departments, the municipality, even banks and universities can enter the rigmarole to deny welfare and citizenship benefits to ease their burden or exercise their red-tape power.
The newly elected BJP government in West Bengal has already said people scrubbed from the voter rolls will not be entitled to welfare benefits. A prominent editor like Rajagopal has been able to get the Chief Minister of Keralam (his native state), the Editors Guild of India and the journalism fraternity to intercede on his behalf.
The millions of poor workers who have been put into suspended animation by SIR will have neither the agency nor the resources to put up a fight.
It falls to the Supreme Court therefore to intervene, urgently and suo motu, to stop this kickabout by national agencies and bring about clarity on identity, citizenship, voting rights, welfare entitlement, and travel, all the things that this regime is bent upon obfuscating in pursuit of its fantastic notion of nationhood.