The political consequences of the Election Commission of India’s controversial voter-roll revision came into sharp focus on May 4, when the Bharatiya Janata Party swept to power in West Bengal with 207 seats.
In a state where 1.36 crore voters were reportedly flagged by the commission as having a “logical discrepancy” and at least 27 lakh people have appealed against their names being deleted from the rolls, the Trinamool Congress’s defeat by the BJP will inevitably subject the commission’s actions to searching scrutiny.
On the face of it, however, it would seem that the Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls conducted in West Bengal was unconstitutional for three reasons.
First, the Election Commission created a new category of electoral suspicion – “logical discrepancies” – without statutory authority. Second, it delegated voter-eligibility decisions to officials exercising quasi-judicial power without adequate training, standards, or procedural clarity. Third, it created an appeals process that could not realistically correct wrongful exclusions before polling.
Whether wittingly or not, the Supreme Court has ensured that administrative delay results in mass disenfranchisement.
The Supreme Court should therefore have stayed exclusions, based on the “logical discrepancy” category in the case of Mostari Banu v Election Commission of India, and required the commission to disclose the criteria on which it...
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