Supreme Court has declined to set a deadline for appeals against exclusion of some 20 lakh voters in West Bengal due to their names not being eligible for the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) roster. This bureaucratic bungling is, understandably, being seen by many as a democratic rupture a fortnight before the state goes to polls.
At its core, democracy rests on a simple premise: voters choose their representatives, not the other way around. Yet, the exclusion of lakhs from electoral rolls due to the inability to verify eligibility in time flips things around. And when the State is unable to have its machinery in place to adjudicate the validity of redressals, its inability can be construed as unwillingness.
The sheer scale of disenfranchisement - 20 lakh people - comes in the backdrop of an election battleground where weeding out '(Bangladeshi) illegal migrants' is part of the opposition BJP's cri de guerre. This makes it especially worrisome for citizens who fear disenfranchisement being conflated with 'decitizenship' at some stage.
Logistically, it is, indeed, difficult at this stage to impose a realistic timeline for appeals. But with most appellate tribunals not even 'fully operational', the adjudication system effectively consigns these individuals to electoral limbo.
Other states that have conducted SIR have also had large correctional exclusions. But with Bengal's sensitivities - a large Muslim population in a border state - the case is significantly different politically. Disenfranchisement - for reasons other than duplication, death or genuine ineligibility - is a grave error of omission that Election Commission should seriously address.
If voters cannot trust their right to vote to be protected, then democracy itself wobbles.
At its core, democracy rests on a simple premise: voters choose their representatives, not the other way around. Yet, the exclusion of lakhs from electoral rolls due to the inability to verify eligibility in time flips things around. And when the State is unable to have its machinery in place to adjudicate the validity of redressals, its inability can be construed as unwillingness.
The sheer scale of disenfranchisement - 20 lakh people - comes in the backdrop of an election battleground where weeding out '(Bangladeshi) illegal migrants' is part of the opposition BJP's cri de guerre. This makes it especially worrisome for citizens who fear disenfranchisement being conflated with 'decitizenship' at some stage.
Logistically, it is, indeed, difficult at this stage to impose a realistic timeline for appeals. But with most appellate tribunals not even 'fully operational', the adjudication system effectively consigns these individuals to electoral limbo.
Other states that have conducted SIR have also had large correctional exclusions. But with Bengal's sensitivities - a large Muslim population in a border state - the case is significantly different politically. Disenfranchisement - for reasons other than duplication, death or genuine ineligibility - is a grave error of omission that Election Commission should seriously address.
If voters cannot trust their right to vote to be protected, then democracy itself wobbles.
