UP SIR: How women, migrants, displaced slum-dwellers fell through EC’s net

The Federal previously reported (Read Part 1 here) that the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise in Uttar Pradesh was marred by huge lists of voters flagged for “logical discrepancies”—without any apparent logic—less than a week before the draft roll was due. Moreover, a hazy verification process left the exercise in one of the most politically significant states mired in uncertainty a year before it goes to polls.

This final part of the two-part series will explore which categories of citizens suffered most from this algorithmic assault of “logical discrepancies” and “unmapped voters”.

When the SIR exercise swept UP last December, its software net caught the most vulnerable section of society, including women and migrants, in its meshes.

Speaking to The Federal, civil rights activists and NGOs, who are still fighting to get these voters enrolled back into the electoral rolls, alleged that millions of women, migrant labourers, and displaced families were suddenly stripped of their franchise.

From women struggling to trace decades-old parental records to slum-dwellers whose neighbourhoods were razed by bulldozer drives, the documentation-heavy verification process turned the fundamental right to vote into a punishing administrative obstacle course, accused civil rights groups.

Also read: SIR explained: From voter deletions to Form 6, what has changed?

“The overall drive was unconstitutional and pitted against the most vulnerable section of society. We are not against the revision of electoral rolls but the manner in which it was conducted has raised serious issues that the Election Commission (EC) needs to answer,” said Shekhar Dixit, president of Indian People’s Front.

Women, the usual sufferers

Civil society activists alleged that the “logical discrepancies” element left women with little to no agency to prove their genealogy or citizenship.

According to the State Election Commission, as many as 1.55 crore women, compared to 1.34 men, were deleted from the draft rolls. The exclusion brought down the gender ratio of the state from 877 to 824.

After corrections, the final rolls saw an addition of around 42,00,778 women voters, with the gender ratio improving to 834 but far below the original 877.

''Women were the worst hit, as always. Many women who failed to provide the EPIC number of their parents’ voter ID cards were asked by the BLAs to provide the names of their in-laws instead. When the list came out, that very detail flagged them as “dubious voters”.

Those in rural areas saw that wrong age of their parents had been entered in previous electoral rolls and the erroneous age gaps thus created led to the deletion of their names,” noted Chittajit Mitra, Allahabad-based human rights activist and general secretary of People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL).

Migrant workers bore the brunt

Another group of voters that faced the brunt of the “flawed” exercise were migrant workers. As the BLOs and field workers failed to locate them at their houses, they were struck off the initial list. Some were contacted by phone and asked to be physically present for verification or face deletion.

Also read: EC’s SIR relief bypasses 22 lakh Bengal voters trapped in tribunal backlog

“Some of them said they’d get enrolled in the states where they have migrated for work. Others expressed inability to come in person,” a BLO noted.

According to Seema Azad, president of PUCL, many migrant workers were affected as they frequently travel to different states for seasonal work and struggle with proper documentation. She argued that that even the correction window provided by the EC was insufficient to rectify the “systemic errors” that led to their disenfranchisement.

“Correction and revision are for those who can access the process. Many workers could not travel back to provide the proof, so they were simply struck off. Other were scrambling for supporting documents, as Aadhaar was not accepted as standalone proof. So, this overall exercise has significantly hurt those who are at the bottom of the pyramid and rarely heard,” Azad noted.

The documentation conundrum

Civil rights activists, lawyers, and BLOs also flagged critical documentation-led bottlenecks that initially sparked widespread concerns of mass voter disenfranchisement.

As many voters turned up with ration cards and voter ID cards, officials sent them back and asked them to return with a couple of the 11 documents the EC had mandated for verification. These documents included birth certificate, educational certificate, caste certificates, passport, and family registers prepared by state and local authorities, among others.

Also read: SIR Form-7 row: Transparency under scanner amid community targeting allegations

Aadhaar was also included as a supporting document on the directions of the Supreme Court, though not as a standalone document. “We then used Aadhaar to verify and include the voters who were excluded initially,” the BLO quoted above said.

Out of home, out of rolls

This issue became pronounced for the slum-dwellers who had been shifted under the administrative drive in recent years to raze down localities deemed as “illegal”.

“In Lucknow’s Akbarpur area, where over 15,000 families were displaced after the bulldozer action, almost all of them were struck off the rolls. The new locality they had been shifted to had not been declared under any constituency and their previous residence of which they had proof existed no more. We took up their case and went to the court, and after court directions they were added as new voters using Form 6,” Arundhati Dhuru, the firebrand Narmada Bachao Andolan frontline activist, told The Federal.

EC’s defence

The EC, however, defended the revision and called it a necessary administrative exercise that aimed at cleaning up the electoral rolls by eliminating duplicate, deceased, or permanently migrated entries and ensure clean rolls.

Also read: EC SIR row: Situation demands INDIA-plus unity, says MA Baby about phone call with Mamata

Following the political uproar, the EC also relaxed the requirement of voter’s physical presence for the hearing process. That relaxation, however, came with a rider. If a voter is unable to attend the verification hearing in person before the registration officers, they can authorize a family member or representative to attend on their behalf.

Experts admit these relaxations helped correct some glaring flaws in the initial draft roll. They, however, contest that many valid voters still have been left out of the ambit and in a limbo.

Statewide campaign

“Some of the corrective measures were announced because in the initial draft roll a significant portion of the BJP’s vote bank also got excluded. When the field workers and party leaders flagged these concerns, the corrective measures were announced. But how effective those measures were in rectifying the exclusions remains debatable and is still a matter of research,” Dhuru added.

Dixit and his Indian People’s Front plan to launch a campaign across rural Uttar Pradesh to identify voters disenfranchised during the SIR.

“We aim to build a movement demanding their inclusion in the electoral rolls. Failing that, we’ll demand the scrapping of the SIR altogether. The first round of protest will commence on October 2 in Sitapur,” Dixit added.