Scientists call it a “natural experiment”. When something happens on its own, not by design, and allows us to compare two objects as if an experiment had been run. The sudden lockdown, for example, allowed us to see how blue our skylines would be if industries and vehicles were to stop. We didn’t stop industries for this comparative study. It just happened.

We stumbled upon something similar a few days ago. Not one but two natural experiments have occurred in the course of the second phase of the SIR. We anticipated one of these — the unusual revision in Assam. “Great, just as we expected”, was our first WhatsApp exchange with each other when the CEO of Assam released the draft voters’ list. The second case was a chance discovery, a news clipping about panchayat elections in UP.

Both these experiments now provide rigorous scientific proof, or as close to it as we can get in real life, that the SIR carries a fatal design defect. The problem with the SIR, as we have kept saying, is not in the idea of an intensive revision of the voters’ list. The problem is with the two unprecedented and unnecessary design elements in the SIR —compulsion of enumeration forms and the requirement of proof of citizenship. These two experiments show that once both these elements are removed, voter list revision does not lead to mass disenfranchisement.

Let us begin the story at the starting point, the SIR in Bihar. The publication of the draft list shocked everyone as 65 lakh names were dropped. Eventually, thanks to the Supreme Court-enforced damage control, the net deletions came to 44 lakh. Everyone had their private theories. Surely, Bihar has too many........

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