The Election Commission of India (ECI) has told the Supreme Court of India that it has a constitutional duty to ensure that only citizens are enrolled as voters, and that no foreigner makes it to the electoral rolls. Even a single foreigner cannot be allowed to exist on the voter list, the ECI argued before the Court on January 6. The ECI is defending its ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, which has struck off millions of names of voters. The concerns raised by all Opposition parties, legal scholars and civil society relate to the evident burden and harassment being caused to ordinary citizens of the republic in having to prove their existence and identity. Nobody has argued for the inclusion of any foreigner, or for keeping electoral rolls as they are today — faulty and impossible to navigate. At the heart of this debate is the relation between the ECI’s claims and the process. Over many decades, the ECI has consistently grown its institutional integrity — despite occasional slippages — by expanding the franchise not merely as a formality but also as a substantive right. The maxim that no amount of escaped criminals justifies the punishment of a single innocent person has resonance in this context. In a leap into the phantom world of foreigners taking over the country, the real challenges to the integrity of India’s electoral process are being overlooked. Or, maybe, the foreigner paranoia is being whipped up as a facade for polarisation.
That Article 324 of the Constitution grants the ECI independent “control over the preparation of electoral rolls” is not contested. The concern is that the ECI is not acting independently and in a manner that boosts confidence in the electoral process. The litmus test of an electoral process — very much like a judicial process — is whether the side that loses still trusts the process. Unfortunately for India, the current ECI has its priorities turned on their head when it frames its constitutional duty as the removal of foreigners, and not the enrolment of every Indian citizen. While several authorities have a duty to look for foreigners, only the ECI has the duty to enrol Indian citizens as voters. Through changes in rules and their partisan application, the ECI has undermined its own stature and the sacred duty assigned to it by the Constitution in the recent past. Now, by unleashing avoidable suffering and inconvenience upon Indian citizens under the garb of chasing the last foreigner, it is misreading the letter and ignoring the spirit of its constitutional duty.
