'The EC should not have let the initiative go into the hands of the political leadership. By allowing this to happen, they have opened a Pandora's box.'
Former Chief Election Commissioner O P Rawat admits that in recent years the Election Commission of India's prestige has taken a hit but this can be corrected if the ECI goes back to its earlier practise of ensuring immediate investigation into each and every allegation of electoral malpractice.
Rawat believes the ECI should not have hurried into holding the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of Bihar's electoral rolls.
"I cannot understand why exclusion and inclusion are being conducted as separate exercises. In the past, they went together," Mr Rawat tells Rediff Senior Contributor Rashme Sehgal.
The Special Intensive Revision of Bihar's electoral rolls has turned out to be a highly contentious exercise.
The last SIR was conducted in Bihar in 2003. Elections were held in 2005 and so there was ample time for the public to appeal and seek redressal if the need arose.
The SIR is a very thorough exercise in which the EC has to conduct visits from house to house and include or delete people's names as and where required.
An SIR is conducted every 10, 15 years otherwise only a summary revision is done. The timing of the SIR is an issue as Bihar is scheduled to go to the polls for assembly elections in the next four months.
Usually, an exercise such as SIR would take at least eight to eight months to complete.
This means that the time between the schedule publication of the final electoral rolls and the assembly elections is very little, barely two months, which leaves little time for the aggrieved to go in for an appeal.
While it is mandatory for the EC to conduct a summary revision, this could have been done without this hue and cry and everyone would have been happy.
But don't you think the monsoon is hardly the time to conduct such an elaborate exercise?
Summer and monsoon is the time when people are in their homes. Large scale migration takes place after the kharif crop is harvested which would be around October-November.
Then there are those who have already migrated to big towns but want to keep their enrolment at home.
The EC has informed them stating that they can use their phone to upload their enumeration form online as also the documents that they want to submit.
Nevertheless, the outcome of this elaborate exercise has resulted in the exclusion of 65 lakh voters without the EC giving any details about why their names have been excluded.
Since the time was short, the EC thought it prudent that all those who find their name in the 2003 electoral roles need not submit any proof.
They will be deemed citizens and they can submit their enumeration forms along with the reference to the 2003 rolls and that will be good enough.
These people comprise around 65% of the voters in Bihar which means about 5 crores. But as a necessary corollary, the remaining 2.97 crores are required to prove their citizenship and this being a very huge number, the Election Commission also relaxed the norms on this.
On July 6, they issued an advertisement in Bihar that even those who do not find their name in the 2003 electoral rolls can submit their forms without any document which can be submitted later but before August 30.
This whole issue of 65 lakh names being deleted is that numbers do not matter. The EC does not have enough evidence. Deletion is based on non-submission of enumeration forms but these can be submitted later.
There are several issues around this. There are those who have permanently shifted out of the state.
Then there are livelihood issues that require them to be away from home and there is nobody to tell them there is a deadline to meet.
Then there can be people who are working in fields who can also be left out. They are resource poor.
If they turn up in polling booths at the time of voting and find their names are missing, that can create other problems.
Bihar is a very sensitive state. There are around 45,000 polling booths located in hyper sensitive areas and another 35,000 which are located in not so critical areas where they may just one policeman manning that booth.
If 100 people land up them who do not have the proper documents, it can create a major problem for the presiding officer at that booth.
There has been this whole controversy around the Aadhar card.
The Aadhar card is proof of identity but not of citizenship. But the issue of deleting names of photo ID card holders issued by the EC is a very tricky.
If the name of a voter is to be deleted, the EC has to go through the due process which means issuing a notice to that individual and then giving him a reasonable opportunity to present his point of view.
In an SIR, the BLO (block level officer) is expected to visit every home but many BLOs have been caught on camera by many TV channels showing that they did not have time to visit and thereby have ended up denying enrolment to individuals.
But there has not been a single inclusion of a new voter in this elaborate exercise.
That is very surprising. The Election Commission always used to proactively enrol people without much ado about citizenship. Even in this SIR, Form 6 is being submitted with the declaration being enough.
It seems to be a dichotomy that new registration is based on Form 6, whereas all those who are already there on the electoral roll have to submit proof.
Since the proof was not available easily and time was running out so the Election Commission themselves relaxed it and said that submit the enumeration form and proof can be given later and have extended the time to August 30.
There is news that there will be at least one lakh inclusion though the number may go up. That number will be announced later and all these names will be included.
I cannot understand why exclusion and inclusion are being conducted as separate exercises. In the past, they went together.
The other very surprising aspect of this entire exercise is that it is being undertaken to purge voter rolls and to weed out illegal immigrants but the name of not even one such immigrant has been disclosed so far.
Yes, that is very surprising. The premise on which this entire exercise was ordered and 2.6 crore voters were subjected to this rigorous house-to-house exercise was to reveal number of illegal immigrants.
But there is nothing to corroborate these claims.
So was this then a false premise? The law provides for easy identification of illegal immigrants and there was no need to go in for an SIR and subject people to this kind of exercise this close to the election. I don't think this is good.
The other contentious issue is that CCTV footage cannot be made public as it will affect the privacy of women voters.
Ours is a secret ballot. We have kept a 45-day window so that if there is a complaint, it can be attended to.
CCTVs were installed to create documentary evidence to dispel grievances of political parties distributing freebies and expecting that those who have received them come to the polling booth to cast their vote.
But NOTA has been kept as an option to ensure that in case, the voter does not want to cast his vote in favour of any political party, he can press the NOTA button.
There is also the dichotomy that while Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has been asked by the EC to submit an apology and also an affidavit because of the allegations he has levied on voter fraud, no such affidavit has been asked from BJP leader Anurag Thakur who has also levied similar allegations.
The EC should not have let the initiative go into the hands of the political leadership. By allowing this to happen, they have opened a Pandora's box.
Earlier, the EC had a convention that if any allegation of malpractice was made, it was looked into and the findings were put in the public domain.
This would put the issue to rest. I cannot say why they have changed their stand and their allowed this whole issue to simmer.
The EC should have taken the initiative and ordered an on the spot enquiries wherever allegations of malpractice were made.
They have no right to ask anyone to apologise or file an affidavit.
The ECI's credibility has taken a major hit in recent years.
I do hope that the EC will finally ensure all contentious issues will be put to rest. This will be an important step for them to regain their confidence.
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff