SIR’s 'Illogical Conundrum'—Are We Ek Sau Tees, Or Ek Sau Chalis Cr Hindustanis?

The EC’s 'SIR-cleansed' rolls may have, unfortunately, ended up excluding over 15 crore eligible Indian adults!

Like Einstein's Theory of Relativity, our Election Commission has came up with an equally astonishing Theory of Ineligibility, writes Raghav Bahl.

(Photo: Aroop Mishra/The Quint)

India’s “venerable” Election Commission (EC) coined an Einsteinian, tech-heavy phrase—“logical discrepancy”—to inject turbulence into West Bengal’s Assembly polls. If Albert Einstein confounded the world with his Theory of Relativity, i.e., that time is not a constant but the fourth dimension that elapses differently for bodies moving at variable speeds, our EC came up with an equally astonishing Theory of Ineligibility, i.e., that citizenship is not a permanent right but one that can be interpreted differently for bodies that are “logically discrepant” with respect to the electoral rolls of circa 2002-03.

How did it play out on the ground? Quite whimsically, I dare say. If my father had spelt his name as Behl in 2002, but I had switched to the spiffier B’a’hl, I would be “logically disqualified”! Even if I had not changed the spelling, but my BLO made a typo while uploading my details, I would still be stripped of my voting rights!!

Now see what would happen to my poor father. Since my grandparents were rather fecund, my dad had six siblings in 2002. No fault of his, or any of my uncles and aunts, but the EC would declare them “logical outliers”. Seven God-fearing, honest people robbed of voting rights! 

If you think the algo spared my mother, think again. Her father—my maternal grandfather—is somewhat forgetful and dyslexic. He wrote his year of birth as 1997, instead of 1927. Should the heavens fall if a nonagenarian mistakenly writes 9 instead of 2? But heavens did fall, because the EC’s algo struck off everybody in my mother’s family.

Why? Because the age difference between my grandfather and my mother was less than 15 years, and between the old man and my nephews and nieces was less than 40 years.

Wham! Nearly a dozen people were removed from the electoral rolls merely because an old man wrote '9' when he should have written '2'.

SIR’s Cruel, Algorithmic 'Logic'    

You would be excused for thinking I’ve cracked cruel jokes above. Yes, it’s a fictional story, but a highly plausible one. Because the EC’s “logical discrepancy” algorithm used exactly similar reasoning for banishing over 1.36 crore Bengali voters off the electoral rolls. Some fought their way back via adjudication, but over 30 lakh continued to languish, disenfranchised by an “illogical” computer. 

Until now, ten states and three union territories have suffered through the innocent-sounding Special Intensive Revision, or SIR, process. And the impact has been a sweeping damnation! Nearly 5.68 crore out of 58.41 crore voters—AN ASTONISHING TEN PERCENT—have been declared persona non grata. That’s the staggering first count, and only a few lakh have managed to subsequently establish that they exist in flesh and blood.  

Some of the data points are beyond belief. Over 2 crore voters, or 13.21 percent, have been obliterated in Uttar Pradesh; over 68 lakh, or 13.4 percent, have become apparitions in Gujarat; even tiny Goa is left bewildered at how 1.27 lakh revelers are mere ghosts who walk those lovely beaches. And this is barely half the story. Almost 40 crore voters in 17 states and five union territories are yet to be covered in Phase III.

Ek Sau Tees (130), Or Ek Sau Chalis (140) Crore Indians?

Here’s an existential question that will haunt the upcoming exercise in Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Ladakh, to name just a few territories—in sync with the earlier trend, will another 10 percent, i.e., 4 crore voters, dissolve, phantom-like, into the acid of SIR?

Such an existential question should compel every right-thinking Indian to pause… and confront the sheer “illogical discrepancy” of the spooky, non-existent voters “caught” by the EC’s SIR. But I haven’t heard anybody in EC or GOI (Government of India) ask a devastating question—if 10 percent of adult Indians have vanished from electoral rolls, shouldn’t our total population be reduced by an equal number?

So tomorrow, when PM Modi roars his signature slogan, shouldn’t he be saying “ek sau tees (not chalis) crore Hindustani”?

Think about it. India’s adult, 18 years+ population is estimated at 102.7 crore. In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, 96.88 crore voters were registered, i.e., a seemingly efficient 94.33 percent coverage, which was a feather in the EC’s cap.

But then SIR destroyed 5.68 crore voters in two phases—and if the rate of destruction stays uniform in the third phase, another 4 crore voters could vamoose, leaving a terrible enigma for the EC-GOI duo to grapple with: 

• Total adult population—102.7 crore 

• Total voters on the “SIR-cleansed” rolls—87 crore (10 percent less than 96.88 crore) 

• Total number of Indian adults who would have gotten ghosted—over 15 crore!!

SIR’s 'Logical Discrepancy' Vs 'Illogical Conundrum'   

Since the EC loves this phraseology, here’s an “illogical conundrum” that they must answer: our current population estimate is based on the census number of 2011 multiplied by several scientifically determined demographic variables like births, deaths, fertility, mortality, and migration rates. And these scientific equations tell us that 15 crore adult Indians have disappeared after the EC’s SIR.

Why? How is that possible? 

• Did many more adults die during the COVID-19 pandemic than were captured in data points?

• Since births are now well documented, that’s difficult to fudge, right? 

• So, have 15 crore more adults left the country via dunki routes? If yes, then immigration policing across the globe is idiotic or complicit or both at an unbelievable scale! 

• Or will phase III SIR throw up nearly 15 percent additional voters? That is, SIR will turn on its head, discovering an astonishing number of new voters in these territories, pointing towards an unprecedented scale of internal migration?

Since the EC loves to speak “logically”, it’s clear that none of the above “conundrums” provide a clue or explanation of where 15 crore adult Indians have vanished.  

In fact, the singular, inescapable conclusion is as follows: The EC’s “SIR-cleansed” rolls could have, unfortunately, ended up excluding an exceptionally large number—OVER FIFTEEN CRORE—of eligible Indian adults!

It’s a disheartening, tragic QED.