Context

• As the Election Commission of India (ECI) closes the first phase of its Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar by August 1, 2025, the state finds itself embroiled in familiar controversy.
• Allegations of disenfranchisement, especially of the poor, minorities, and migrants, have taken centre stage in political debate.
• Critics claim the ECI’s methods are partisan and exclusionary, while supporters argue for the necessity of maintaining the integrity of election rolls.
• Both arguments, however, fall short by failing to address the deeper, structural misfit between India’s election laws and its increasingly mobile society.

Flawed Foundations: Historical and Legal Context

• The Representation of the People Act, 1950, was drafted for a post-colonial India characterised by predominantly rural and sedentary populations.
• Over 82% of Indians lived in villages, and less than 8% were migrants at the time.
• The electoral laws, therefore, presumed that citizens would vote where they were born.
• Unfortunately, this assumption has persisted, surviving profound demographic and economic shifts.
• Today, India is among the world’s most migrant-heavy societies, over 450 million internal migrants constitute 37% of its population.
• Bihar exemplifies this: 36% of its households have at least one migrant, and more than 20% of the working-age population lives outside the state at any given moment.
• The 2011 census indicated nearly 13.9 million Biharis resided outside Bihar; current estimates suggest that number is now between 17 and 18 million.
• The legal fixation on geographic ordinary residence thus inevitably produces material exclusions.
• In 2025 alone, over 1.2 million names, primarily those absent during verification, were deleted in Bihar.
• Some districts with high migration rates saw roll deletions between 5%-7%, systematically disenfranchising citizens compelled by economic need to move.

Citizenship vs Residency and ECI’s Dilemma

• Citizenship vs. Residency: The Conceptual Collapse
  • The current public debate often conflates citizenship, a juridical status guaranteed by the Constitution and Citizenship Act, with residency, which is a contingent and administrative basis for enrolling a voter in a specific constituency.
  • The Representation of the People Act, by prioritising residency, locks out millions of internal migrants.
  • For such voters, disenfranchisement is not merely a bureaucratic hurdle, but an existential erasure: they are left in a liminal space, neither fully here nor there, with little prospect for political inclusion.
• The ECI’s Dilemma: Administrative Minimalism
  • The ECI’s approach, administrative minimalism, centres on procedural compliance rather than substantive justice.
  • By strictly enforcing procedural rules without questioning the underlying legal assumptions, the ECI often preserves the appearance of neutrality at the cost of perpetuating systemic exclusion.
  • Cleansing the rolls of non-residents may meet formal requirements, but it cannot be regarded as just when the rules themselves are unfit for a mobile society.

Perspectives from Abroad

• Democracies facing similar challenges have innovated to balance roll integrity and inclusiveness:
  • United States: Absentee and mail-in ballots permit tens of millions of voters to remain registered in their home states while voting from wherever they reside.
  • Philippines: Facilitates absentee voting for its 1.8 million overseas workers, regularly achieving turnout rates above 60%.
  • Australia: Mobile polling stations in remote and transient communities have driven voter participation above 90%.
• These solutions demonstrate that designing for inclusiveness is possible when supported by institutional will and creative reform.

Political Instrumentalization and Public Awareness

• Political parties often exploit voter disenfranchisement as a means for electoral mobilisation, rather than educate or assist affected citizens.
• Practical safeguards, such as the ability to scrutinise draft rolls and submit claims or objections, remain largely inaccessible due to illiteracy, poor communication, and the hardships of migratory labour.
• Surveys indicate that more than 60% of Bihar’s voters, and less than one-quarter of migrants, were aware they could challenge roll changes, leaving the majority voiceless and vulnerable.

Conclusion

• Defending the ECI against scapegoating is important, but insufficient. True electoral justice requires demanding more from both the institution and ourselves.
• The integrity-inclusiveness trade-off is not inevitable; it is a matter of legislative and institutional design.
• The ECI must not only conscientiously enforce the law but actively advocate for reforms that align India’s electoral practices with the realities of a migratory society.
• Meanwhile, political actors and civil society must work to educate, empower, and include the marginalised, ensuring that no citizen is left voiceless by administrative oversight or legislative inertia.