REJECTING SIR, RECLAIMING UNIVERSAL ADULT FRANCHISE
The Election Commission should have listened to this public hearing” ( Justice Patnaik)
Earlier the people would choose the government, now the government chooses the people.” Yogendra Yadav
A jury of by an eminent panel expressed deep reservations about the manner, method and motivation behind the entire SIR exercise.
It expressed surprise at the haste at which the entire exercise was being carried out. Justice Madan Lokur urged the Election Commission to take the people into confidence at every stage of the process. He was responding to a public hearing in which sixteen teams from ten states undergoing SIR placed their experiences in the National convention on Defending Universal Adult Franchise.
Justice AK Patnaik wished that the EC had sent its representatives to listen to the woes of people articulated in the meeting in this convention. Ill effects of SIR would not stop merely with mass disenfranchisement: That electoral rolls may now be linked to Aadhaar database, leading to disentitlement of the citizen from various welfare schemes.
Professor Nivedita Menon questioned the motives of the SIR. She wondered if the apparent errors of the SIR were a part of its design to punish the marginalized sections, especially the minorities. Senior journalist Pamela Phillipose welcomed the idea behind a public hearing of this kind and expressed the hope that it opens possibilities of democratic accountability.
Extracts of the public testimonies:
“ I was declared dead in the Final Voter List of Bihar. They have stopped my pension. I have an Aadhaar Card but my even then I cannot get it.” Jeetni Devi, Phulwari Sharif, Bihar
“ All the men in my village left for Gujarat, Karnataka and Maharashtra for work. None received any enumeration form. Our votes will get cut.” Adivasi woman from Badwani, Madhya Pradesh.Gajanan Jangid,” So much pressure was put on my brother that he gave up his life. What was the hurry? No one in the government has heard our case. No FIR has been lodged against anyone responsible. What do we do? We condemn the entire SIR process”
Manish Kunjam: Many villages were destroyed during the action against the Salwa Judum in Bastar. None of these displaced villagers have been enumerated in the SIR.”
The Convention pointed out that the SIR is the the largest ever disenfranchisement in the history of any democracy. We face a challenge to the foundational achievement of our freedom struggle — universal adult franchise.Already as per news sources, 6.68 Cr. disenfranchised at just the Draft Rolls process. The Convention demanded that:
All electors whose names have been excluded from the electoral rolls during the SIR, without due process, must be restored; henceforth, the practice of excluding names due to non-submission of enumeration form must be stopped.
A revision of voters list must be completely delinked from determination of citizenship; time tested method of house-to-house visit combined with de-duplication software etc. should be used for regular revisions;
The meeting ended with a resolution We affirm our resolve to defend universal adult franchise, the hard-won legacy of our freedom struggle, through peaceful, constitutional and democratic means.
The Convention was organized by Kavita Shrivastava ( National President, PUCL) Anjali Bharadwaj (National Convener, NAPM), Ajit Jha and Yogendra Yadav ( Bharat Jodo Abhiyan).
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