ECI shifting citizenship proof burden in SIR dangers undermining public belief, says former Election Commissioner

Former Election Commissioner Ashok Lavasa cautioned that the Election Commission of India (ECI) dangers undermining public belief by shifting the burden of proving citizenship onto voters in the course of the ongoing particular intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.

Delivering the Ajay Gandhi Memorial Lecture in Hyderabad on Saturday, September 13, Mr. Lavasa described the train in Bihar as ‘unprecedented’ within the ECI’s historical past and warned that its methodology may set troubling precedents if expanded nationwide.

Mr. Lavasa recalled that the ECI was distinctive amongst constitutional our bodies as a result of its functioning associated on to residents quite than authorities establishments. Since its inception in 1949, adopted an inclusive strategy, he stated, and contrasted this inclusiveness with the continuing revision in Bihar, the place the Commission has for the primary time created classes of voters based mostly on whether or not they have been enrolled earlier than or after 2003, the yr of the final intensive revision.

Those already on the rolls in 2003 have been handled as presumptively eligible, whereas these added later have been requested to furnish further documentation. Further sub-categories required proof based mostly on date of delivery, voters born earlier than July 1987 wanted solely the 2003 roll, these born between 1987 and 2004 had to supply parental proof, and people born after 2004 needed to present paperwork for each dad and mom, he stated.

“This shift of onus created immense sensible difficulties,” he added, citing challenges in states equivalent to Bihar the place floods, migration, and low doc possession charges meant many couldn’t comply. When the draft roll was revealed, out of seven.89 crore electors, solely 7.24 crore names have been retained,” he stated.

Lavasa questioned each the legality and equity of the method. “If somebody has been on the roll since 1951, in 2003, and once more in 2025, however fails to return a signed kind, how truthful is it to exclude them?” he requested. He identified that 65 lakh names have been obliterated with out serving particular person notices, as required underneath legislation, underneath the pretext of making a recent roll.

The Supreme Court, he famous, needed to intervene to allow Aadhaar as proof, observing that not one of the 11 prescribed paperwork established citizenship conclusively. “By venturing into the willpower of citizenship, the Commission has entered very slippery territory,” Lavasa remarked.

He additionally criticised the declare that the train was meant to ‘purify’ the rolls. The methodology, he argued, merely inherited present discrepancies because it relied on pre-filled varieties drawn from the ECI’s personal database. Unlike earlier discipline surveys, the place enumerators verified family particulars immediately, the current strategy lacked impartial verification, and but resulted in mass exclusions underneath the classes of ‘lifeless’, ‘migrated’, or ‘duplicate’, he stated.