Special Intensive Revision

Assam’s Chief Election Officer has started the process of a special intensive revision of electoral rolls in the state. It is part of a nationwide initiative of the Election Commission to remove various anomalies in the electoral rolls, including names which appear in more than one voter’s list. As the Assam Chief Minister has said, the same names might appear in electoral rolls of different districts like Barpeta and Guwahati, and even in Delhi. Some people have a tendency to get their names in more than one place. Again, certain people take pride in saying that they cast their votes in two different constituencies in the same election where polling dates differ. On the contrary, a sizable section of people belonging to the indigenous communities do not bother to get their names transferred when they change location. As a result, they are deprived of casting their votes at the time of an election. In this era of advanced technology, the Election Commission should have taken steps to adopt methods used in the process of issuing Aadhaar. Aadhaar cards are so designed that each one is unique for each individual, and the system is built to prevent duplicates. Multiple enrolments for the same person are rejected as duplicates. This ensures that a person cannot get two Aadhaar cards under the same name. While the row over Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar has generated a political controversy for reasons best known only to those opposition political parties which are crying foul over it, the Government of Assam as well as the Election Commission will have to remain prepared for facing similar protests here too. While it will be for those who protest or oppose to justify their stand with evidence, the fact remains that duplicity of names exists in Assam’s electoral rolls like in any other state, and this has to be rectified. In addition to this, Assam also has this issue of a large number of non-citizens or illegal migrants already having their names enrolled as voters. It was during a special revision way back in 1978 in the Mangaldoi Lok Sabha constituency of Assam that a large number of names of such non-citizens were first detected. It was this incident which had established the fact that a large number of infiltrators from erstwhile East Pakistan, who had come to Assam between 1948 and 1971, had entered their names in the electoral rolls. This discovery triggered large-scale protests, leading to the launching of the Assam movement in 1979 demanding three Ds – Detection of such infiltrators, Deletion of their names from the state’s electoral rolls, and Deportation of such persons in the interest of national security and protecting the identity of the indigenous communities. While several thousand names were detected and deleted under directions of the Election Commission in the subsequent decades, a large number of such names continue to exist in the electoral rolls. At least in one instance, a person identified and confirmed by a Foreigner Tribunal as an infiltrator – and thus a non-citizen – had even tried to contest an Assembly election in Assam.