Kerala’s battles with the SIR

Over the past weeks, Kerala has had a roller-coaster ride with respect to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. The element of amusement has been missing from it. Of the 2.78 crore voters who were issued forms during the house-to-house enumeration phase, 24.08 lakh found themselves excluded when the draft roll was published on December 23 under the Election Commission of India (ECI)’s extended time-table. A further 19.32 lakh electors on the draft roll are in limbo — ‘no mapping’ cases in ECI parlance — as they could not be linked to the 2002 SIR roll, which serves as the base list.

Kerala is now in the phase where claims and objections by electors are being filed on the draft and notices for personal hearings are being issued to them. The office of the Chief Electoral Officer (Kerala) has said that election officials have generated 17.71 lakh notices and served 18,915 notices in the case of the ‘No mapping’ electors. Election officials maintain that excluded voters, if eligible, can still add their names by enrolling afresh using Form 6, or, in the case of overseas electors, Form 6A.

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The CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) government and the State’s political parties have repeatedly blamed the SIR for an injustice where voters are made to feel that their citizenship is in doubt. Citizens who have been active voters for decades stand deleted from the rolls just because they have been marked in the Absent/Shifted/Dead (ASD) list as ‘Untraceable’ or ‘EF Refused’ (the ECI description for electors who decline to accept enumeration forms or return them). Political parties and individual electors have highlighted instances where such categorisations have been erroneous. The ASD list, in the case of some polling stations at least, has been outright unbelievable with over 500 voters listed as ‘Untraceable,’ ‘Permanently Shifted’ or ‘EF Refused.’ These issues have grabbed the headlines with several citizens, high-profile individuals included, finding themselves in the ASD list or in the grey, fuzzy zone of ‘No Mapping’ electors.

Barring differences in the data, what is playing out in Kerala is likely to find an echo in other States where the SIR is on. But the huge expatriate population in Kerala makes some elements of Kerala’s SIR singular in nature. Political parties allege that little has been done so far to ensure the inclusion of overseas electors. They have also asked the ECI to allow authorised representatives to appear on the behalf of such electors if they are summoned for hearings by the Electoral Registration Officers (ERO).

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The fact that the SIR coincided with the 2025 local body elections — an overlap that led to much of the protest against the SIR — has also led to inevitable comparisons. The voter roll maintained by the State Election Commission, which is responsible for the local body elections, listed 2.86 crore electors at the time of polling in December. The roll maintained in Kerala by the ECI, which handles the Assembly and Parliament elections, saw a dip from 2.78 crore voters to 2.54 crore voters after the publication of the draft SIR roll.

To be fair, the Kerala CEO has strived to make the SIR palatable and participatory by holding weekly meetings with the political parties and allowing a media presence. The CEO, Rathan U. Kelkar, has also said that all eligible electors will be included in the final list, to be published on February 21, and that there will be no harassment in the name of hearings. But what has been apparent and constant from the beginning is the trust deficit.

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Political parties, primarily those aligned with the LDF and the Congress-led Opposition United Democratic Front (UDF), view the ECI and the SIR as convenient tools employed by the BJP and the RSS to further their larger political and ideological agenda. The hardship Kerala has had to undergo to secure extensions in its SIR schedule — the Supreme Court had to be petitioned at one point — has only served to strengthen such notions.

At this juncture, it is pertinent to remember that in the past, cumbersome nationwide exercises such as voter enrolment, the conduct of elections and the decennial Census have enjoyed the public perception of impartiality and bureaucratic efficiency. To say that public trust in the SIR hinges on guaranteeing the inclusion of all eligible voters in the roll in a trouble-free, citizen-friendly atmosphere would not be overstating it.

tiki.rajwi@thehindu.co.in