Citizens’ group warns of disenfranchisement in Gujarat SIR exercise, holds sit-in dharna

By A Representative   

The Gujarat unit of the Centre for Protection of Democratic Rights and Secularism (CPDRS) has held a sit-in dharna near Town Hall in Ahmedabad to protest against the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the voter list being carried out by the Election Commission in the state. 

CPDRS said the exercise was legally questionable, procedurally flawed and risked disenfranchising large sections of the electorate. The organisation stated that it had sought an appointment with the Chief Election Officer (Gujarat) to submit a detailed memorandum but had not received any acknowledgement. It therefore released the memorandum as an open letter and circulated it among the public.

In the open letter addressed to the Chief Election Officer in Gandhinagar, CPDRS urged the immediate termination of the SIR, arguing that the exercise lacked constitutional and statutory backing. It said a public interest litigation challenging the legality of SIR was already pending before the Supreme Court, yet the Commission was moving ahead with “extraordinary urgency and expenditure”, a move the organisation said raised questions about the timing and intent.

The letter criticised what it called the shifting of constitutional responsibility from the Election Commission to ordinary citizens by requiring door-to-door verification and placing the burden of proving citizenship on existing voters. CPDRS argued that such requirements conflicted with Articles 324 and 326 of the Constitution, which mandate universal adult suffrage but do not give the Commission powers to determine citizenship. It further said that Article 327 required all electoral procedures to be governed by parliamentary law, and that Section 22 of the Representation of the People Act prohibited deletion of names without due process. According to the group, the SIR process violated these provisions.

CPDRS also questioned the lack of transparency in the exercise, saying the Commission had not disclosed data on deletions in the previous SIR in Bihar, despite citing infiltration as a reason for the current drive. It objected to the selection of 2002–03 as a cut-off year and criticised the inconsistent acceptance of identity and address documents, with voter ID cards and Aadhaar being deemed insufficient while other documents were accepted without clear rationale.

The organisation warned that the SIR disproportionately affected marginalised groups such as daily-wage workers, migrants and women, who faced difficulties producing documentation or remaining available for verification. It said no measures had been announced to safeguard migrant workers from exclusion or to prevent a decline in the gender ratio, as had reportedly occurred during the Bihar exercise. CPDRS alleged that voters were being removed without proper notice or hearing.

The letter further objected to the deployment of primary school teachers as Booth Level Officers, saying threats of arrest warrants for non-compliance violated their rights and disrupted schooling for large numbers of children.

The CPDRS urged the Election Commission to halt the SIR immediately, conduct a transparent and citizen-friendly annual revision in line with the Representation of the People Act, and publish all data related to past SIR exercises, including deletions on grounds of nationality. The memorandum was signed by seven CPDRS representatives, including Dr. Jharna Pathak, Dr. Aum Kotwal and Meenakshi Joshi.