Why Gandhi and Ambedkar’s reflections on voters’ list is critical in times of electoral purge

THE MANNER IN WHICH THE ELECTION COMMISSION OF INDIA (‘ECI’)  is conducting the  Special Intensive Revision (‘SIR’) in Bihar — shifting the burden of proof of citizenship on people and asking them to fill forms and submit several documents including birth certificates of their parents — would lead to mass disenfranchisement. Such exclusionary process of preparing electoral rolls is contrary to the ideal of inclusion based on which voters’ lists were prepared right from the first general elections during 1951 and 1952 till January 2025. The worst victims would be women, Dalits, Muslims and impoverished people from villages who migrate in large numbers to different parts of India in search of livelihood opportunities. Never ever electoral rolls were revised with an intent to delete names of voters on such a large scale.

Deletion of voters

Additionally, the ECI has announced that names of 65 lakh voters have been deleted from the electoral roll of Bihar on the grounds of  death, permanent migration or any other reason. It is rather strange that the ECI never made public the list of deleted voters, the booths in which they resided and how many of them died and how many migrated permanently. 

It is heartening that by the time this article was being written, the Supreme Court while hearing a bunch of petitions challenging SIR in Bihar, mandated the ECI in its  interim order that, among others, it must disclose names of those 65 lakh voters booth wise by stating their EPIC numbers, state reasons behind deletion of each voter, make available the easily accessible digital form of  the list containing those  names and widely publicise about it in newspapers, TVs and social media.

Gandhi’s vision on adult suffrage

Such an opaque manner of preparing electoral rolls by deleting such a  huge number of people strikes at the root of democracy and people’s right to vote, which Mahatma Gandhi equated with real power. He did so on September 26, 1931, while dealing with the  issue of the challenges that villages would face due to the high tariffs imposed by greedy and powerful mill-owners. These tariffs were far worse than those imposed by the Britishers  to protect the Lancashire cotton trade. Gandhi argued  that real and more political power would flow from universal adult suffrage and, therefore, it would be impossible for the monied classes to crush the interests of poor villagers who would get the same voting right as those belonging to the affluent sections of society.

It is tragic that more than a hundred years after those words were uttered by Gandhi, the ECI is crushing the ideal of universal adult suffrage through its so called “intensive revision” of electoral rolls.

On September 17, 1931, while participating in the Round Table Conference in London and speaking at the Federal Structure Committee, Gandhi outlined the broad scope of universal adult franchise and insightfully stated: 

“Adult suffrage is necessary for more reasons than one; and one of the decisive reasons to me is that it enables me to satisfy all the reasonable aspirations, not only of the Mussulmans, but also of the so-called untouchables, of Christians, of labourers and all classes’.  

Such an all encompassing vision sustaining adult suffrage remained integral to freedom struggle and got enshrined in the Constitution, of which we are observing 75 years now.

ECI’s SIR in Bihar is bound to snatch away the right to vote,  in the words of Gandhi, of  "Mussulmans, …of the so-called untouchables, of Christians, of labourers and all classes.’