Flawed by design, exclusionary in impact
An editorial criticizes the Election Commission of India's 'Special Intensive Revision' of electoral rolls, arguing that the process has led to the mass deletion of genuine voters. The piece highlights significant discrepancies in voter counts across several states.
Why it matters
The integrity of electoral rolls is fundamental to democratic legitimacy, and concerns over mass disenfranchisement have significant political implications.
For more than 75 years, the defining preoccupation of the Election Commission of India (ECI) has been “inclusion”. The first general election of 1951-52 had to enrol an electorate of around 17 crore from scratch, many of whom were illiterate. Successive Commissioners treated universal adult franchise as a promise to be fulfilled rather than just a principle to be stated on paper. India could genuinely be proud of being an electoral democracy where voter turnout among the poor is higher than that among the rich, unlike in many western democracies.
Editorial | Obstacle race: On Special Intensive Revision exercise
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