Losing Voting Right Has Become a Major Concern of SIR in Bihar

Snatching the voting rights of the poor by default by the Election of India while doing the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the voters' list has become a major concern not only among the opposition parties but in the media as well.

This concern has also been accentuated by what The Hindu in an editorial said the puzzling decision by the commission to exclude Aadhar and ration cards from the 11 approved documents to be submitted by the voters during the revision.

Among the three concerns which the commission wants to address during the revision is inclusion of undocumented immigrants in it. It is such a big problem that it cannot be fixed in such a short time or as easily as the commission wants it to be wrapped up

The history of documents has been that whoever lays his or her hands on them whether by wrongful ways or rightful, the rights mentioned in them become theirs.

So, it is said that what is real between the document and the matters mentioned in them, it is only the document which is real, not what are written in them.

In a state where corruption is rampant, the SIR is likely to open the floodgates for the bureaucracy to mint money for issuing the documents. Yet, tens of lakhs of people will not be able to produce the documents leading to losing their voting rights, which can in way be justified.

Meanwhile, the Rashtriya Janata Dal has demanded that Aadhar and ration cards be allowed as valid documents for validating or including the names in the voters' list.

It will be better for both democracy and the constitutional body to defer it for some time and relaunch it after having wide consultations with all the stakeholders.