Is SIR undermining voter rights in Bengal? | Jawahar Sircar interview

High-profile voters in West Bengal, including a Nobel laureate and former senior police officials, have received notices under the controversial special intensive revision (SIR) of the electoral roll, triggering a debate over legality, process and voter rights. The Federal spoke to Jawahar Sircar, former West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer and ex-MP, to understand what went wrong, why it matters, and how it could shape politics in the state.

From your experience as West Bengal’s former chief electoral officer, how should the election machinery ensure that every eligible citizen is accurately included in the electoral roll?

Sircar said the entire process is already laid out in the Registration of Electors Rules, which have worked for nearly 70 years. Every government, including the incumbent Narendra Modi government, has been elected on the basis of rolls prepared under these rules. “So you cannot suddenly turn around and say everything was wrong, that the rolls were full of Bangladeshis or bogus voters,” he said, calling this a narrative pushed by CEC Gyanesh Kumar, whom he named as responsible for the present exercise.

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Using a sharp analogy, Sircar said giving such a complex process to someone without adequate understanding was like “giving charge of a wild bullock cart to someone who cannot even handle ponies”. He accused Kumar of dredging up certain powers from electoral law, inventing others, and turning the entire process into a deeply flawed exercise.

Sircar traced the philosophy of voter registration back to Sukumar Sen, India’s first Chief Election Commissioner, who built the system on outreach, urging citizens to come forward and enrol, and to help clean up the roll by reporting deaths or those who had moved away. “That outreach policy continued from Sukumar Sen until Gyanesh Kumar came,” he said. “Now it has been inverted. It has become an exercise of sheer power and domination.”

Having conducted six elections, including two parliamentary polls across 42 seats, and dealt with leaders like Jyoti Basu and Mamata Banerjee, Sircar said he had never seen such a mess. “It is a man-made mess.”

Sircar said the law allows for intensive revision, similar to a census, but there is no provision for a special’ intensive revision. “So the very phrase ‘special intensive revision’ is questionable. The law uses the word ‘homicide’. What is ‘special homicide’?” he asked, arguing that inventing new legal categories makes the entire exercise vulnerable to being struck down.

He said courts have been slow to intervene because of a long-standing doctrine that constitutional bodies — the Election Commission, Parliament and the judiciary — should not interfere with each other, even when gross injustices occur.

More fundamentally, he pointed out that the rules require a Form 4 notice before any house-to-house verification. This notice politely tells the voter what the roll says and asks for corrections — a “gentleman’s approach”. “Form 4 has never been issued in this exercise,” he said. “If courts were strict, they could declare the whole thing null and void.”

Instead, he described how block-level officers (BLOs) arrive unannounced, often accompanied by block-level agents (BLAs) who are typically from ruling parties. “So from the very start it is compromised,” he said. The BLO and the BLA drop a letter and an enumeration form — a census-style form with no clear legal basis. “Who authorised this form? Under what law?” he asked, rejecting the claim that it comes from residual powers.

Because computer systems then flag mismatches, voters are made to stand in queues “like a fish market” to show papers to junior officials trained in fault-finding. “Their power comes from finding a fault and then threatening people,” he said, noting this mentality exists in bureaucracies everywhere but is being misused here.

Sircar said the whole exercise shows a combination of arrogance and an incomplete understanding of how mass administrative systems work. He recalled absurd examples from government service, like a ration card being rejected because a woman named Anita Devi did not fill a column marked Mr/Mrs.

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“The right to vote is sacred,” he said. “And the Election Commission’s duty is to persuade citizens to exercise it.” Instead, he said the process has come to reflect an assertion of power. BLOs were given impossible deadlines, creating intense pressure. “Twenty-three of them committed suicide across India, including in Gujarat,” he claimed, adding that heart attacks and deaths among election staff had never been so high in 70 years.

He also criticised the rushed timelines, especially in Gujarat, which is not facing elections. “Why do it in three weeks? You could have done it over two or three months,” he said, arguing that the rush was meant only to demonstrate authority — “mere paas taakat hai”.

Sircar said a second, more dangerous aim had become clear: bringing citizenship into voter verification. India’s citizenship laws are convoluted, and most people cannot produce documents for their grandparents. But the election law is based on ‘normally resident’, not on detailed citizenship verification. “Your job is to conduct elections, not determine citizenship,” he said.

He warned that if every service — railways, motor vehicles — began demanding proof of citizenship, governance would collapse. He accused a small group of Hindu fanatics of celebrating the idea of “catching Bangladeshis” or “Jatra Tamils”, saying this was neither humane nor practical in a divided state like Bengal that shares deep cultural and family ties across borders.

Even if some illegal residents exist, he said, the numbers are fractional and do not justify tormenting the whole country. “Get your priorities right,” he said.

How can electoral integrity be ensured without such heavy-handed verification?

Sircar said the integrity of the roll is presumed. If it were wrong, then the elections of 2014 and 2019, and governments in Bengal and Tamil Nadu, would all be illegitimate. Of course, some people die or move away, but that can be addressed through Form 4 and normal updating.

“You don’t need Gestapo techniques,” he said. “I have sent Form 4, and I have got results.” He also noted that some people choose to keep their voter registration in their ancestral home out of sentiment, even if they live elsewhere. “Put my name there. I promise I won’t vote in Bombay,” he said. “These are individual choices. Why turn it into an issue?”

He accused the present exercise of being driven by a desire to do what even the Home Ministry has not done — undertake a nationwide citizenship verification, particularly in a border state like Bengal.

Sircar said the Election Commission is now mentally associated with oppression and with the BJP, and that association will hurt the party, especially in West Bengal. “No one will forget standing in line for four or eight hours and being insulted to prove their own papers,” he said.

He added that this has politically helped the state’s chief minister. “She was on the back foot because of allegations of corruption and oppression. Now she is on the front foot,” he said. “They have done her a favour — at least in Bengal.”

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