The 60 lakh Bengali voters whose eligibility is still under adjudication should get the benefit of the doubt; EC’s delay should not rob them of their right to vote
About 60 lakh people who seek to vote in the forthcoming West Bengal assembly elections still face uncertainty as to whether they would be able to vote come polling day, April 23 or April 29. Their eligibility is under adjudication.
India’s jurisprudence follows the principle that a person is deemed innocent until proven guilty. This principle is sound, and should apply to those accused of being ineligible to vote. Unless the bona fides of the grounds for suspecting their ineligibility as voters are established, they should be presumed to be eligible. The benefit of the doubt should go to the voter.
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The Election Commission (EC) is absolutely right to insist on having a clean electoral roll. However, this basic requirement, instead of functioning as a constant light that illuminates its working round the year, seems to have struck it like a bolt of lightning very close to the next round of elections.
Revision of electoral rolls should be a continuous process
The process of revising electoral rolls should be continuous, and taking place in the background, assisted by collation of data from different sources such as the registration of births and deaths, change of address in Aadhaar, the shifting of ration cards from one state to another, vehicle registration and transfer in different regional transport offices, prolonged absence from employment guarantee muster rolls, cessation of pension withdrawal, and so on.
Technology allows such data to be gathered, brought together and analysed to create intelligence. The income tax department is able to bring together data on a taxpayer’s diverse activities of income, consumption, savings, asset liquidation, capital gains and capital losses and generate a picture of the taxpayer’s tax liability, without relying solely on the claims made in the tax return filed by the taxpayer.
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India’s digital public infrastructure, built on the basis of the electronic unique identity scheme, vehemently opposed by many a short-sighted politician and civil servant at the time of its conceptualization and rollout, is today a matter of pride for most, including some of those very same politicians who had opposed it. But the main purpose of the digital public infrastructure is not to provide politicians with a reason to preen, but to assist in governance. Generating collatable data is as important a governance function as direct benefit transfer.
If the EC failed to function round the year, and came alive with a jolt of electric inspiration that it is its duty to create a clean electoral roll just before the elections are due, and commenced an exercise too ambitious for its administrative capacity, just before it is called on to conduct assembly elections, it is not the voters’ fault.
If EC failed to keep up, it’s not the voter’s fault
Does this amount to making a case for a surveillance state? Absolutely not. A modern state operates on the basis of vast amounts of data on its citizens, to advance public interest. In Britain, government labs routinely test the sewage to look for potential new pathogens, and, in the process, are privy to what sort and what quantities of intoxicants are consumed in particular boroughs. This leads to better healthcare and public welfare, not thought control and oppression.
What separates data-informed administration from surveillance is a separate subject; let us note here that the intent and institutions for oversight and accountability to the people of the state machinery form the dividing line between informed governance and surveillance.
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If the EC failed to function round the year, and came alive with a jolt of electric inspiration that it is its duty to create a clean electoral roll just before the elections are due, and commenced an exercise too ambitious for its administrative capacity, just before it is called on to conduct assembly elections, it is not the voters’ fault.
Is the right to vote in India a matter of chance?
To deprive voters of their franchise because of the EC’s own lapses is as unfair as the greenhouse gas emissions that drove the industrial revolution and the growth take-off that have made today’s rich countries what they are creating global warming, and increase in the frequency and scale of extreme weather events that wreak havoc on the lives of the poor in the developing world.
Media reports about the reasons for suspecting the eligibility of some people on the electoral roll to vote are astounding. A Muslim couple, both educators, dared to name their daughter Amrita Priyadarshini in the 1980s. The software scanning the electoral roll tagged this as a case of mismatched surnames. The name ended up on the adjudicated list. When it comes up for adjudication, the confusion is bound to be cleared up. But will it come up for adjudication before the date when the electoral roll absolutely has to be finalized, that is, before the date for filing nominations? That is a matter of chance.
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Is the right to vote in India a matter of chance, software ineptitude and bureaucratic apathy? Why is it hard to accept that the benefit of the doubt should go to the voter?
Nothing called purpose-specific citizenship
Should the EC allow non-citizens to vote? Certainly not. If a case is made out to the EC that so and so, who has managed to worm his way into the electoral roll, is actually a foreigner, it should investigate the claim, and, depending on its finding, reject the objection or excise that person from the electoral roll.
It is not the EC’s role to establish or dispute anyone’s citizenship. Here, too, the principle “innocent till proven guilty” should guide it. In very few states of the country is the administrative machinery developed enough to create reliable documentation that would allow a resident to prove his or her citizenship without a fuss. That is the case even today. A voter’s eligibility would need forensic examination of lineage proof going back to the undocumented past. Neither the EC nor the staff taken on deputation to do its job has the expertise for detective work across time.
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The EC claims its job is to determine citizenship only for the purpose of voting. No, it is not its job to determine citizenship for any purpose. If someone comes up with credible evidence of someone else’s non-citizenship, the EC should act on that. It is beyond the EC’s remit and ability to establish the citizenship of any individual.
And there is nothing called purpose-specific citizenship. Someone is a citizen or not a citizen. Someone cannot be a non-citizen for voting and, at the same time, a citizen for claiming direct benefit transfers.
That old merchant of Venice, Shylock, thought he could extract his pound of flesh, and no one would care if he spilt blood or not. Shylock did not succeed. Should the Election Commission of India, in a similar attempt to ignore the non-anaemic consequences of its violence on the people’s franchise, expect better results?
(The Federal seeks to present views and opinions from all sides of the spectrum. The information, ideas or opinions in the articles are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Federal.)
