Illogical reasons: on The Hindu’s investigation of Delhi’s draft rolls

That the ECI’s SIR of electoral rolls has been flawed by design and tuned to exclude genuine electors rather than ensure their full enrolment is now well established. The Hindu’s investigation of Delhi’s draft rolls and the names that the ECI flagged as “logical discrepancies” shows that the process is not only exclusionary but also insidious. The arbitrary nature of these “discrepancies”, especially those relating to family size, suggests that they were chosen to target communities with higher, though declining, fertility rates, for exclusion. Muslims make up 13.6% of Delhi’s draft rolls — in line with the 2011 Census — but accounted for 20.3% of those flagged for “logical discrepancies”. This number goes up to 30% for those flagged under the five reasons linked to family size. None of these criteria bears on the eligibility of an elector, who should be an Indian citizen, at least 18, ordinarily resident in the constituency and should not be disqualified under the law. Following Lal Babu Hussein (1995), a name on an earlier electoral roll has probative value as evidence of citizenship and cannot be struck off without inquiry. The children an elector has, a parent’s age at the elector’s birth or name spelling are unconnected; neither the ECI’s Manual on Electoral Rolls (2023) nor its SIR of 2002-03 provided for such checks.

When the ECI began the SIR in Bihar, the enrolment and claims and objections phases had their infirmities but there was no direct or indirect discrimination by religion. The Hindu estimated that 18.4% of those deleted from Bihar’s pre-SIR rolls were Muslims, in line with their population share (17.7%, 2011 Census). But in the SIR’s Phase 2 in West Bengal, the ECI introduced the “logical discrepancies” check midway. Electors already on draft rolls were flagged on unexplained criteria with ECINET software rather than the statutory Electoral Registration Officers deciding on who got flagged. The impact was severe — 27 lakh electors were deleted following adjudication by judicial officers, after being flagged overwhelmingly for “logical discrepancies”; 22 lakh appealed but just 1,607 electors were reinstated in time for the vote. By September, nearly 93% of the 1.26 lakh appeals that were decided had restored electors to the rolls — an indication of large-scale disenfranchisement before the vote. A sample-based analysis of those excluded after adjudication estimated a much higher share of Muslims than their population share. The same process has now been carried over to Phase 3, including Delhi, where The Hindu’s investigation shows a clear skew against Muslim electors. The Supreme Court must now halt the SIR, as a process built on arbitrary criteria with no basis in electoral law, and which discriminates against specific communities, should not be allowed to firm up electoral rolls.