First the Right to Vote, Now Welfare Schemes: SIR Could Further Punish ‘Deleted’ Voters in Bengal

In the past few days, two very unfortunate statements have been doing the rounds in Indian news media. First came from Agnimitra Paul, a minister in West Bengal's newly formed Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government. On 11 May, Paul said that those deleted under the special intensive revision (SIR) process before the 2026 state Assembly polls won't receive benefits of welfare schemes.The second came from the honourable Chief Justice of India, Surya Kant, who, on 15 May, while presiding over a Supreme Court bench, described unemployed youth of the country, journalists, activists, and RTI warriors, as akin to "cockroaches" and "parasites", sucking the nation dry.Both statements have the jarring sting of disenfranchisement and exclusion—and reveal the moral bankruptcy ailing our political system today.Bengal: Persons Excluded in SIR Won't Get Welfare Benefits, Says BJP MinisterPaul, who has taken charge as Minister of Women and Child Development, told reporters that 1 June onwards, the West Bengal government has decided to carry out an assessment of names that have been deleted from the rolls. "Those whose names have been struck off, if they are receiving welfare money, then they are not supposed to... Someone who is dead is not supposed to get it. Someone who is not a citizen of this country, they are not supposed to get it. So, we will do this analysis. Those whose names have been struck off, how many of them have been getting Lakshmir Bhandar, their names will be removed," she told reporters. Following outrage and panic over her statement, the minister soon clarified to portals like The Wire that those who applied to the appellate tribunals or for CAA shall not be excluded.But similar statements have also been made in Bihar. A day after Paul, Bihar Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary told a national newspaper that those persons whose names were deleted “will not be entitled to any government benefits, including ration and other welfare schemes.” He went on to say that bank passbooks of persons excluded from the voter list would also be cancelled “in due course of time”.While it remains unclear whether an order has been passed to this end, such statements reveal a deep bias and appear unconstitutional. They violate principles of equal treatment—and simply do not offer a hearing to those being deprived.A political party or government may include or deprive someone from their scheme following certain transparent principles. Grants can be revoked if, for instance, a government runs out of funds, and thus needs to pull out of providing benefits to certain sections. But doing so on the basis of deletion from the voter roll is downright illegal as you are questioning the very existence of the person.And we are talking about lakhs of people.The record in the last few weeks shows that nearly 98 percent of the people who applied to the appellate tribunals were restored as voters. Would an illegal immigrant or a non-genuine person, who is non-existent, come up to appeal? Would they not go into hiding instead?The fact that they are coming up to appeal is proof that they exist. The 27 lakh appellants against deletions are absolutely confident that they are legal voters. The number of genuine citizens who are deleted as voters is much higher because in Bengal, deletions happened in phases, and many did not even know that their names were deleted, until polling day arrived.SIR May Not Have Won Bengal for BJP. That Doesn’t Make It Fair.Even till March, the Election Commission of India (ECI) went on deleting people.One of the reasons for the SIR process to get so drawn out was because this task—which has been performed by executive officers in all districts for 75 years—was entrusted this time to judicial officers, who weren't used to it. The reason given by the Supreme Court was that it was fed up of the quarrels between the ECI and the state government.The first stage was the mapping phase. Then the ECI brought in its centralised computer that decided what the law says the electoral registration officer, or ERO, should do, thereby controlling the ERO's time-tested discretion, who also deleted certain names. Once the Supreme Court removed the executive officers from the SIR process, judicial officers were yanked out of other places like Jharkhand and Odisha, and sent to near or remote districts of Bengal. This was not only time-consuming but replete with administrative problems, too. I'm not questioning the work they did, but certain judicial officers took rather harsh calls. There have been cases like Samserganj where almost 92 percent of voters were simply struck off. 92 percent deletion is just absolutely abnormal. Anyhow, once the deletions started, the appeals started to roll in as well. Applications were filed to local electoral officers.Unlike what has happened successfully for 75 years, this time the appeals were not disposed of simultaneously as and when they came (within a week is usually the norm), but accumulated for a month.Then, they were handed over to judicial officers who were hard-pressed at the time to dispose of the cases. That's where the first problem began.Now we come to the last stage—the "logical discrepancy" phase. This term was "INVENTED" by the ECI for Bengal. I have been involved in the electoral process for 40 years. Before me, others have done it for 35 more years. The term "logical discrepancy" was never heard of, nor does it appear in the Registration of Electors Rules.You cannot deprive a person of welfare, livelihood, and state-sponsored benefits based on "logical discrepancy"—a loosely defined and opaque term with no legal test—and introduce it suddenly without ascribing reason.'Both BJP & TMC Polarised Bengal Polls': Congress Leader Adhir Ranjan ChowdhuryDenying someone the right to quality life based on such deletions is violating the principle of equality before law on an untenable ground.If you are saying they won't get benefits, do you mean they are all Bangladeshi? It's inane logic. And it goes on to show that anxieties of people with regard to the SIR process being a disguised citizenship exercise—something the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) has vehemently denied when pulled up by the top court—were well-founded. On 21 January, the Supreme Court took an affidavit from the CEC in which he pleaded that the ECI is not getting into citizenship, and that the citizenship was only an ancillary issue when it came to SIR. He himself withdrew from the idea of citizenship because he knew entangling SIR with citizenship was neither proper nor legal.If the ECI is saying SIR is not to decide citizenship, how can state-level leaders say it is? By denying deleted voters access to government schemes, you are correlating voter deletions with citizenship. And this is a dangerous and slippery slope. The tribunals are working very slowly. They may take months to go through all the names. So, should the victims be penalised for this delay? One calculation showed it will take 50 years to complete the exercise—at this rate. And what of those yet to appeal or those improperly deleted in the first "unmapped" list?Meanwhile, the apex court, once beacon of institutional fairness for the masses, appears to be exclusionary and partisan. If only it had questioned the ECI's role in coming up with newly minted terms (never used before in India) to harass citizens and booth level officers (over a 100 died allegedly under pressure or by suicide)! Let it itself re-examine its decision to burden High Court judges with the task of hearing appeals... that is time-consuming and has deprived 27 lakh citizens from their constitutional right to vote. This system has to be withdrawn. And attacking those who question the system as "parasites" reveals an adversarial side of the judiciary that undermines the very spirit of the constitutional democracy it is expected to enshrine. (As told to Rakhi Bose) (Jawhar Sircar is a retired IAS officer. Among other positions, he has been CEO of Prasar Bharati, and Culture Secretary, GOI. He tweets at @jawharsircar. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses, nor is responsible for them.)

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The Expanding Shadow of SIR: After Right to Vote, Welfare Could Be Denied

Linking SIR to welfare links it to citizenship. If ECI said SIR isn't about citizenship, how can ministers say so?

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Topics: West Bengal Welfare Scheme