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Mamata Banerjee vs the Election Commission—Why India needs an annual voter list revision

We cannot absolve the Election Commission of all the blame, but we must emphasise that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee must shoulder the lion’s share of the responsibility for these exclusions.

There are several lessons to be learnt from the recent Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in several states, with West Bengal giving us more headaches than the earlier ones in Bihar, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

Before we assess what went right, what wrong, and who should share the blame, let us first give ourselves a synopsis of the completed SIR process in West Bengal, which, of course, excludes those deletions that are yet to be decided by the appellate process. Some of the restorations may, regrettably happen well after the election process gets concluded.

It is clearly problematic if so many voters cannot exercise their franchise, but it is possible to exaggerate this denial of rights. I have seen no election in which many voters failed to find their names in the voter lists, but what is different this time is the scale of deletions.

The numbers put out in the case of West Bengal, which votes in two phases on 23 and 29 April, suggest that over 90 lakh names have been deleted. That is a large number, but the headlines are simply misleading. When newspapers say that 90 lakh names have been deleted, and that these deletions work out to 12 percent of the pre-SIR voter numbers, they are speaking a half-truth. Hidden in the 90-lakh figure is the 63 lakh deletions due to deaths, absence from registered addresses or permanent migrations to other states. These are valid exclusions, and they make sense for they are key to preventing bogus and fraudulent voting by others.

Lesson 1: Don’t believe the headlines. The........

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