The ongoing exercise of Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls has raised serious concerns about the potential disenfranchisement of large numbers of citizens. In many instances, people are being asked to produce retrospective documents to establish their citizenship—documents that many genuine citizens are unable to provide. The challenge before policymakers is to identify prospective amendments to the Citizenship Act that would ensure that no legitimate citizen is excluded either from citizenship or from the electoral roll.
While concerns about illegal migration may be valid, the attempt to identify undocumented migrants decades after their entry should not end up depriving genuine citizens of their voting rights. Any reform must therefore guard against the risk of mass disenfranchisement. At the same time, the law must address the arbitrary and retrospective distinctions in citizenship provisions—such as those based on whether a person was born before or after 1987—which have created considerable confusion and uncertainty.
It is worth recalling that the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) of 2019 provided accelerated pathways to citizenship for certain categories of migrants. A similar approach could be considered in a broader and more inclusive manner. One possible solution would be to grant citizenship to those who have been residing in India for a specified number of years, thereby regularising the status of long-term residents who remain undocumented. Such a measure could help resolve the persistent problem of identifying undocumented migrants without undermining the rights of existing citizens.
Equally important is the urgent need to overhaul the system through which electoral rolls are prepared and maintained. Persistent errors in electoral rolls—including the presence of deceased persons, duplicate entries and large clusters of voters registered at single or fictitious addresses—indicate structural weaknesses in the existing system. Even after intensive revision exercises, these errors tend to reappear.
A major reason for this recurring problem is the absence of a continuously updated database of residents and citizens at the local authority level, as exists in several other countries. Such a database should ideally be updated through integration with digitised birth and death registries and through the recording of in-migration and out-migration. Without such systemic reform, any electoral roll revision is likely to become outdated within a short period of time.
The Registration of Births and Deaths (Amendment) Act, 2023, which came into effect on October 1, 2023, signals the Union government’s intention to digitise and centralise birth and death records. These records could potentially be linked to population registers, electoral rolls and other administrative databases. For such a system to be effective, the database should also be accessible at the level of local wards or gram panchayats as a register of residents and citizens.
Each individual in this database could be linked to a single unique identifier such as Aadhaar, along with a Family ID—similar to the Kutumba scheme implemented in Karnataka—and a Unique Address ID. The initial database could be created through a comprehensive door-to-door survey identifying all residents above the age of 18 and recording their Aadhaar numbers as proof of identity. In many countries, residents are legally required to inform local authorities when they move in or out of an area. A similar system could be introduced in India, supplemented by periodic surveys to identify migrants who may have failed to report their relocation.
A single, digitised and continuously updated database would make it easier to remove the names of deceased persons, eliminate duplicate entries and prevent the sudden addition or deletion of large numbers of voters shortly before elections. It would also reduce the possibility of hundreds of voters being registered at the same address or at fictitious locations.
The issue of temporary migrants also requires careful attention. The mass deletion of migrant workers from electoral rolls—such as reported in Bihar when individuals were absent from their homes during verification—raises the risk of disenfranchising citizens who migrate temporarily in search of work. A more inclusive approach is required to ensure that such mobility does not lead to the loss of voting rights.
Section 20A of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, introduced through an amendment in 2010, allows non-resident Indians to remain registered as “ordinary residents” in the constituency corresponding to the address in their passport. A similar facility could be extended to internal migrants. By amending the Act to introduce a new provision—perhaps a Section 20B—citizens who migrate temporarily for employment could be allowed to retain their registration as ordinary residents in a constituency of their choice. Such a measure would help prevent the large-scale deletions currently affecting migrant voters.
Another issue arises from the recent changes to Form 6, which is used for the inclusion of names in electoral rolls. Previously titled “Application for inclusion of name in electoral roll,” the form could be used by any eligible voter whose name had been omitted. However, an amendment to Rule 13 of the Representation of Electors Rules, 1960, in June 2022 altered the wording to specify that claims for inclusion must be made by a “new elector.” In certain cases, such as in Bihar, the form was further described as an “Application Form for First Time Voters.”
This change has created practical difficulties. In some constituencies, elderly citizens who had voted in earlier elections but found their names missing from the rolls were compelled to submit Form 6 as “first-time voters,” effectively making declarations that were technically inaccurate. This raises the possibility of unnecessary legal complications. It would therefore be advisable to reconsider the amendment and restore the earlier provision allowing Form 6 to be used for any claim for inclusion of a name in the electoral roll.
Finally, the question of proof of citizenship remains unresolved. Since Independence, India has not issued a universal citizenship identity card. Apart from those who possess passports, most citizens do not have a document that explicitly certifies their citizenship. Once a comprehensive database of residents and citizens is established, it may be useful to consider issuing a citizenship identification card to those enrolled in the electoral roll, as is done in several other countries.
At the same time, policymakers must consider whether creating a new card is necessary. It may be possible to use Aadhaar or its Virtual ID as a functional citizenship identifier, provided safeguards are in place and individuals who have been legally declared foreigners are excluded.
Taken together, these reforms—updating citizenship provisions, establishing a continuously maintained resident database, protecting the voting rights of migrants, rationalising electoral procedures and clarifying citizenship identification—could significantly reduce the risk of disenfranchisement. They would also help ensure that India’s long-standing humanitarian traditions are reflected in administrative systems that protect the rights of all genuine citizens.
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The writer is the Executive Trustee of CIVIC-Bangalore and a Karnataka State Representative of the Association for Democratic Reforms. The views expressed are personal
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