Published Jun 05, 2026 | 9:14 PM ⚊ Updated Jun 05, 2026 | 9:14 PM
Voters at a polling booth in West Bengal.
Synopsis: Until recently, successive ECs contributed to streamlining systems, learning from experience, introducing technological innovations, and communicating transparently with all stakeholders. That collective effort now stands negated and marginalised. The foundational concept of universal adult franchise, upon which the architecture of our electoral democracy rests, has been damaged wilfully and wantonly. The trust that existed stands broken. (This article was originally published in The Wire).
The Constitutional Conduct Group, a group of 181 former civil servants of the All India and Central Services, along with the Group on Federalism and Elections, of over 70 eminent citizens, have released a statement noting that India’s electoral democracy faces a grave crisis due to the manipulation of electoral rolls through the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process.
The following is their public statement.
Never before in the history of our Republic has the trust reposed by the People in our electoral system been shaken so rudely, brazenly, and with such ruthless impunity. The recent elections to the West Bengal Vidhan Sabha revealed grave dysfunctionalities and abdication of responsibility within the two institutions constitutionally mandated to be the custodians of that trust: the Election Commission of India (ECI) and the Supreme Court.
This democratic trust was built painstakingly over several decades of robust democratic practice. Until recently, successive ECs contributed to streamlining systems, learning from experience, introducing technological innovations, and communicating transparently with all stakeholders. That collective effort now stands negated and marginalised. The foundational concept of universal adult franchise, upon which the architecture of our electoral democracy rests, has been damaged wilfully and wantonly. The trust that existed stands broken.
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In breaking this trust, a diabolical stratagem was introduced by the ECI and subsequently legitimised by the Supreme Court. The ECI weaponized its lawful constitutional authority to introduce unnecessarily convoluted processes that enabled large-scale manipulations of the Electoral Rolls. These processes – particularly the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) – had no precedent, no clear basis in law, and no verified necessity. To this day, there has been no explanation from the ECI for placing reliance on an arbitrarily designed algorithm with a set of irrational criteria to flag “logical discrepancies” in the electoral roll entries of voters and effectively disenfranchising millions of them. There was no reason to abandon the time-tested, continuously refined procedures that had made the ECI an internationally recognised repository of best practices. Historically, these efforts ensured that even a voter living in the remotest part of India felt included, transforming the Election Photo Identity Card (EPIC) into a proud symbol of personal stake in constitutional democracy.
More than just a display of the autocratic style of the current incumbents of the ECI, the wilful disruption of this system served as a subterfuge to carry out large-scale manipulations in the electoral rolls. By shifting the onus on the citizens to enlist themselves as voters and show documentary proof of their legitimacy, by overturning the natural presumption of citizenship that existed in their favour and instead requiring them to show documents which few of them had access to (even when they were already registered as voters in the electoral rolls), by introducing lineage as the basis of voting rights, the ECI ensured that the stated purpose of “purification” of the rolls—itself a term redolent of the practices of the Third Reich—was a mere pretext to ensure the mass exclusion of those who could have resisted a complete shift in the balance of power from a regional party to an ideologically driven, hegemonic, majoritarian force.
Post-poll data convincingly demonstrates a biased deletion exercise designed to overwhelmingly influence outcomes. When 9 million legitimate voters in West Bengal alone were removed from the rolls—including at least 2.7 million verified living citizens barred due to “logical discrepancies” found in their documents—it became obvious that the adopted process was wilfully engineered to exclude.
An election conducted under these conditions is a monumental fraud on the electorate. This holds true irrespective of who won or deserved to win. Had the outcome been different, the process itself would still stand completely vitiated because it denied legitimate citizens their right to vote. In a true republic, denying even a single citizen their vote without due process should nullify an election. That this was done intentionally and at an unprecedented scale amount to a total perversion of democratic principles.
After West Bengal, the SIR juggernaut rolls on in the rest of the country and the process of exclusions and deletions continues unchecked. Already about 59 million net deletions have taken place and this figure could reach 100 million by the time this futile exercise comes to an end. There is evidence that there is an alarming decline in the gender ratio of the electoral rolls and together with the targeted exclusions of Muslims and others seen as hostile to those in power, the SIR will make all our future elections into a travesty of the concept of universal adult franchise.
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The primary battle in West Bengal or anywhere else is no longer merely political or ideological. When the rules of the game are modified suddenly without justification and the entire state machinery is deployed to engineer a predetermined outcome, normal political analysis becomes meaningless and only normalizes the perfidy of the ECI.
It is astonishing that this denial of the fundamental right of every Indian to be on the Electoral Rolls was treated in such a cavalier fashion by the Supreme Court, citing a reluctance to interfere with another constitutional agency. They forgot that the constitutional rights of citizens are infinitely more important than protecting the constitutional turf of an institution that has perverted its mandate to pursue a partisan agenda.
The Supreme Court was the sole institution that could have checked this brazen assault. By endorsing the ECI’s actions, it facilitated a dangerous transformation: the ECI has shifted from being a guarantor of democratic rights to an instrument of State power used to choose its preferred electorate. The independent, fair, and impartial ECI is now a fond memory; democracy has been turned upside down. As a Republic once proud of its independent institutions, we stand diminished. The window for judicial intervention is closed.
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In this hour of despair, the only recourse available is for the people of India to assert their sovereignty to safeguard the foundational values of our Republic. This is a call to forge a broad, unified national front comprising all like-minded political formations, civil society organizations, defenders of federalism, public intellectuals, and citizens committed to constitutional values to build a mass movement through nationwide workshops, conferences, and assemblies to establish a national consensus on the following:
Reclaiming the Republic
This is a fervent appeal to all those who are alarmed by the unprecedented threat facing our Constitution to set aside minor dissensions, overcome leadership egos, and transcend competing party interests and come together to forge a unity of purpose. Together, we can generate an overwhelming democratic force that no authoritarian leader, compromised institution, or oligarchy can withstand. We can, and we shall, overcome. The Republic will be reclaimed.
(This article was originally published in The Wire).
