SIR in Bihar

The Supreme Court is currently hearing petitions against the Election Commission of India’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Bihar, which mandates fresh proof of citizenship for all voters under a one-month deadline, raising concerns about mass disenfranchisement.

Constitutional Foundations Undermined

• Historical Vision of Universal Franchise:India, post-Independence, took a radical democratic leap by ensuring voting rights to all adults irrespective of caste, literacy, gender, or wealth — a principle defended by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar and operationalized by CEC Sukumar Sen in 1951.
• Presumed Inclusion to Presumptive Exclusion:The SIR process shifts the voter validation framework from presumed inclusion to suspicion-based exclusion, contradicting the foundational ethos of democratic participation.
• Structural Inaccessibility:By rejecting widely held IDs like Aadhaar or ration cards and demanding rare documents like birth certificates or passports, the process disproportionately excludes the poor, illiterate, and rural populations.

Procedural Concerns and Legal Contradictions

• Denial of Due Process:The absence of safeguards such as appeals, time extensions, or grandfather clauses violates the procedural due process established in Supreme Court judgments like Rahim Ali vs State of Assam (2024) and Lal Babu Hussein vs ERO (1995).
• Exclusion Through Bureaucracy:The ECI’s technical justifications mask the real impact — a disenfranchisement of nearly 65 lakh people in Bihar, drawing parallels to the “D-Voter” crisis in Assam.
• Failure of Institutional Empathy:Despite judicial questioning of humanitarian costs, the ECI’s rigid adherence to technicalities has revealed a systemic indifference to electoral justice and citizen inclusion.

Broader Implications and Democratic Decline

• Democracy as Belonging, Not Documentation:Voting is a right arising from citizenship, not contingent upon one's capacity to produce state-validated papers; this exclusionary shift undermines the moral foundation of democracy.
• Creation of Electoral Inequality:A new class divide may emerge — those with access to documentation versus the voiceless undocumented — leading to policymaking biased in favour of the urban, salaried, and technologically enabled class.
• Democratic Vigilance as a Civic Imperative:The editorial calls for collective resistance by the Supreme Court, Parliament, and civil society to reaffirm that voting is not a privilege but a constitutional guarantee for all citizens, not just the documented elite.

Practice Question:

Examine the constitutional and democratic implications of documentation-based voter verification processes in India. In light of recent initiatives such as Bihar’s Special Intensive Revision, discuss how such measures impact the principle of universal adult suffrage.   (250 words)