A group of former civil servants has called the special intensive revision (SIR) of the voter rolls in Bihar and extending the exercise to the rest of the country as “one of the biggest threats Indian democracy has faced.”

Groundxero | July 30, 2025

93 retired civil servants under the banner of the ‘Constitutional Conduct Group’, on Tuesday (July 29), in an open letter said that the Election Commission (EC)’s special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar may disenfranchise “a very large segment” of electorates in the state and warned that it’s continuation in Bihar and extension to the rest of the country “poses one of the biggest threats Indian democracy has faced, from the very institution that is meant to uphold the system of universal suffrage.”

The group said that the purported attempt by the EC to clean up and sanitise the electoral rolls is likely to end up disenfranchising a very large segment of the voting population, particularly the poor and the marginalised, who possess little or no official documentation as proof of their citizenship.

The special intensive revision of the electoral rolls in Bihar was announced by the Election Commission of India on June 24. As part of the exercise, persons whose names were not on the 2003 electoral roll will need to submit proof of eligibility to vote. Voters in Bihar born before July 1, 1987, must show proof of their date and place of birth, while those born between July 1, 1987, and December 2, 2004, must also submit documents establishing the date and place of birth of one of their parents. Those born after December 2, 2004, will need proof of date of birth for themselves and both parents.

This means that 2.9 crore out of the state’s 7.8 crore voters – or about 37% of the electors – will have to submit documentary evidence. The EC has provided a list of 11 documents that citizens can provide one as proof of birth, although the most commonly kept Aadhaar, voter and ration cards are not among them, even as the Supreme Court has suggested that the poll body accept them. The EC in its affidavit to the SC has rejected the suggestion made by the SC.

The EC has completed the first, ‘enumeration’ stage of the SIR on July 25 amid an ongoing challenge in the Supreme Court, where petitioners have argued that the exercise will disenfranchising millions of electors. The danger of mass disenfranchisement has been confirmed by the EC with more than 65 lakh names already identified for deletion before any scrutiny of documents. The next stage of mandatory submission and scrutiny of documents is bound to lead to much bigger scales of deletion. A draft voter list will be published on August 1 and the final roll will be out on September 30.

Ground reports of large-scale irregularities in the process that have rendered the whole SIR exercise utterly farcical. Citing several reports in the print and electronic media and the findings of a public hearing held in Patna, the open letter by the former bureaucrats alleged that it is abundantly clear that fraud and forgery on a massive scale has occurred in the very first stage of the SIR process. The letter added that “It is especially reprehensible that this fraud is being committed under the direct supervision of the ECI, bringing this institution of eminence with a glorious past into grave disrepute.”

The former bureaucrats argued that through the SIR, the EC has arrogated to itself (instead of the Home Ministry) the authority to effectively confer or take away citizenship rights without any Constitutional mandate to do so. They further alleged that under the guise of cleaning up voter lists, EC has introduced the contested idea of the NRC [National Register of Citizens] through the backdoor.

The open letter stated that as various petitions and pleas to the ECI in several matters relating to elections have been ignored and casually dismissed in the past, this open letter is being addressed to ‘We the people’ so that “public opinion is mobilised and there is pressure on the ECI to take corrective action.”

The open letter is given below.

CCG Open Statement on the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of Electoral Rolls in Bihar

July 29, 2025

We are a group of former civil servants of the All India and Central Services who have worked in the Central and State Governments during our careers. As a group, we have no affiliation with any political party but believe in impartiality, neutrality and commitment to the Constitution of India.

1. We are writing today to express our alarm at what appears to be an assault on the very foundations of our democracy – the system of universal adult suffrage, i.e. the citizen’s right to vote. The assault is an insidious one where the purported attempt to clean up and sanitise the electoral rolls is likely to end up disenfranchising a very large segment of the voting population, particularly the poor and the marginalised, who possess little or no official documentation as proof of their citizenship.

2. For all the 73 years since the first General Elections were held, the vast majority of the poor in India have held their Right to Vote as their most fundamental stake in Indian democracy. Throughout, the principle followed has been that, unless anyone disputes their status, they are presumed to be citizens and. therefore, attempts should be made to ensure that everyone is included as a voter. In fact, in complete contrast to the manner in which the ‘new’ Election Commission of India (ECI) is functioning, the attempt in the past was to see that no adult Indian was left out of the enfranchisement process and the ECI took it as its solemn responsibility to include people residing in the remotest corners of the country as voters, however marginal their lives might be. The focus was on inclusion and not exclusion on account of alleged ineligibility.

3. So far, a liberal and flexible approach to documentary corroboration of citizenship was followed in the preparation of electoral rolls knowing full well that most Indians lack adequate documents and certificates to establish their citizenship status. It was also recognised that the poor are especially deprived in their access to official documentation resources and therefore need proactive measures to ensure their inclusion. This process has now been reversed to ensure that those with poor access to documents will be deprived of their rights as voters.

4. The ECI has exempted electors included in the 2003 electoral roll from furnishing any document under SIR 2025 other than “the relevant extracts of the said part showing their name in the 2003 electoral roll”. ECI’s affidavit states that the children of electors included in the 2003 rolls have also been allowed to use this avenue to prove their eligibility. Such privileging of the inclusions in the 2003 electoral rolls, over and above all electoral rolls published by the ECI in the two subsequent decades, is untenable, unjust and discriminatory.

5. The SIR is claimed to be an exercise in pursuit of the responsibility entrusted to the ECI under the Constitution, yet what it is effectively doing is to invert precept and practice to:

• pass the burden for proving citizenship to the voter instead of the authorities having to prove why they have excluded someone on the basis of fake citizenship;

• arrogate to itself (the ECI) the authority (instead of the Home Ministry) to effectively confer or take away citizenship rights without any Constitutional mandate to do so;

• introduce the contested idea of the NRC through the backdoor, as it were, in the guise of cleaning up electoral rolls;

• effectively negate and nullify the electoral rolls currently in use (as recently as in the 2024 Lok Sabha Elections) on the pretext that they are likely to be contaminated and, thereby , justify the creation of a completely new set of rolls;

• disenfranchise millions of those who have been registered voters in all elections held since 2003 but may not have documents that they are now required to possess;

• prescribe a list of documents through an arbitrary and whimsical executive fiat making it virtually impossible for most people to obtain them in time;

• use the pretext of cleaning and purifying voter lists to eliminate and delete millions of existing voters who cannot satisfy arbitrary bureaucratic requirements, e.g. married women having to produce birth certificates etc. of their parents;

• give extraordinary discretionary powers to officialdom at various levels to indulge in rent seeking to remove or add voters;

• muddy waters sufficiently to make the entire process mystifying, difficult and opaque.

6. As if it was not enough to commission an SIR which was capable of subverting the electoral process in the garb of reforming it, the breakneck speed with which it has been implemented, the impossible timelines given to the Booth Level Officers, the grossly inadequate infrastructure provided/made available to digitise the data has made a mockery of the very elaborate procedures the ECI has laid down.

7. In several reports in the print and electronic media, notably the YouTube videos of Ajit Anjum, a reputed journalist, it is abundantly clear that fraud and forgery on a massive scale has occurred. There is video evidence to show that voter forms have been filled up not by the voters but en masse by BLOs sitting in officially provided space, and signatures of thousands of those voters forged in an organised manner. Forms and signatures of family members of several voters (including forms of dead members of their families) have been filled, signed and uploaded on the ECI website without their knowledge and consent. When reports appeared that no one was being given the voter’s copy of the enrolment form nor any acknowledgement receipts provided, pictures were hastily taken to show village women lining up and holding their copy of forms as proof of acknowledgement. When the same women were visited again by the investigating reporter – Ajit Anjum – they confessed that the officials gave them the forms, took the photo of them holding them up, published them and then took back those forms.

 8. In a Jansunwai (public hearing) held in Patna on 21.06.2025 with eminent persons like Wajahat Habibullah (former Chief Information Commissioner of India) and Justice Anjana Prakash (retired judge of the Patna High Court) among others as the Presidees, 25 persons, including several illiterate women, from 14 villages described their experiences of what actually happened during the SIR process, and their detailed testimonies showed the extent of the fraud that is being perpetrated in the name of the SIR. This is a shocking revelation of the way the Election Commission is using its powers, forcing the district machinery to resort to unethical practices in an organised manner in the very first phase of this elaborate charade. The evidence of such fraud in the very first stage of the SIR exercise vitiates the entire SIR process and undermines those very constitutional processes that the ECI claims to be following. It is especially reprehensible that this fraud is being committed under the direct supervision of the ECI, bringing this institution of eminence with a glorious past into grave disrepute. The continuation of this futile exercise and its proposed extension to the rest of the country, especially when all that is required is routine updation of existing data in the regular course of the ECI’s scheduled activities, poses one of the biggest threats Indian democracy has faced, from the very institution that is meant to uphold the system of universal suffrage.

9. As our various petitions and pleas to the ECI in several matters relating to elections have been ignored and casually dismissed in the past, we are addressing this open letter to ‘We the people’ so that public opinion is mobilised and there is pressure on the ECI to take corrective action. We also hope that the Supreme Court, which is examining the matter, takes heed of the issues raised by us, particularly as most of us, as members of the CCG, have had long experience of conducting and supervising elections, including the preparation of Electoral Rolls, and are familiar with the complexities of doing so in a vast democracy like ours.

SATYAMEVA JAYATE

Yours faithfully

Constitutional Conduct Group (93 signatories as indicated below)

Feature Image: Opposition MPs protest at the Parliament’s gate over the issue of Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of Electoral Rolls in Bihar, July 2025.