SIR Illegal? Ex-CEC S.Y. Quraishi Calls For Reversal; Brittas Links It To Delimitation

Former Chief Election Commissioner S.Y. Quraishi on Wednesday, September 23, said the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls is illegal and should be reversed, while Opposition leaders at a The Hindu Group event linked the exercise to concerns over the proposed delimitation of Lok Sabha constituencies.

The remarks came at the launch of The Delimitation Debate: The Union and its Units, a book published by The Hindu Group that examines representation, federalism and demographic change. According to The Hindu, the event brought together former election officials, administrators and Opposition leaders to discuss questions of representation, federalism, demographic change and the implications of SIR and delimitation.

Speaking at a panel discussion moderated by The Hindu’s Political Editor Nistula Hebbar, Quraishi referred to a report by The Indian Express reporting major differences between Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and the other two Election Commissioners, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi.

“I have been saying from the beginning, about a year and a half ago, that it is highly undesirable. And today it has come out that it was illegal,” Mr. Quraishi said.

Quraishi said the purity of the electoral roll was a legal requirement and that the Election Commission had been carrying out the exercise for the past 75 years. He questioned the procedure adopted for the ongoing SIR exercise, describing it as “dubious”.

“I have been opposing it, and now today’s revelations in The Indian Express have actually exposed the fact that the Election Commissioners themselves have been questioning the procedures being followed. In fact, it has raised a serious question of the legality of the decision. And all illegal decisions need to be reversed,” he said.

The Hindu reported that Communist Party of India (Marxist) MP John Brittas also argued that SIR and delimitation were interlinked. He alleged that the BJP wanted the two exercises to be structured in a way that would favour the party.

“We have a lingering suspicion that the SIR and the delimitation are interlinked. Just as the SIR was the disenfranchisement of crores of people, they want to secure the delimitation in such a way that it favours the BJP,” Mr. Brittas alleged.

A separate panel, moderated by The Hindu’s Senior Deputy Editor Sobhana Nair, focused on the political implications of the delimitation process. The panel included Congress communications chief Jairam Ramesh, Brittas and Samajwadi Party MP Javed Khan.

Khan said the BJP was jolted by the 2024 Lok Sabha election results in Uttar Pradesh, where the Samajwadi Party won 37 of the State’s 80 Lok Sabha seats. He argued that this prompted the BJP to push for delimitation.

Ramesh said the Narendra Modi government still did not have a two-thirds majority to push through the constitutional amendment that seeks to implement 33% reservation for women after carrying out the delimitation exercise based on the last Census conducted in 2011.

Ramesh said the government had not yet prorogued the Monsoon Session of Parliament even after 41 days of Parliament being adjourned sine die, as it was keen to bring the Delimitation Bill during Navratri. The Bills are planned to be brought around October 11, during the auspicious period of Navratri.

“My focus is on how we deal with October 11,” he said.

The Congress MP said the delimitation debate should not be framed merely as a North-South divide, arguing that it had wider implications for several States.

“So it is not enough to call this simply a North-South issue. It is a much broader issue. States such as Punjab, Haryana, Mizoram, Meghalaya and Assam — all these smaller and northeastern States — have worries, or should have worries. But we can discuss these issues only if there is consultations. There has been absolutely no consultation by the government,” Mr. Ramesh added.

The discussions also covered broader questions of electoral representation and the structure of Indian democracy. Sanjeev Chopra, former director of the Lal Bahadur Shastri Academy of Administration, argued for smaller States as a way of creating a more representative democracy.

Raja Sekhar Vundru, former Additional Chief Secretary of the Haryana government, argued for a system similar to France, where elections can have two rounds of voting. He said the ultimate winner of an election should have at least 50% of the votes polled.

Welcoming the panelists and guests, The Hindu Editor Suresh Nambath said the book did not frame the delimitation debate as a North-South conflict, but examined it through the principles of democracy and federalism.

“We are here to make sure that democracy and federalism are not seen as undermining each other, but reinforcing each other,” Mr. Nambath said.

The Hindu’s Resident Editor (Delhi), Varghese K. George, also made a brief visual presentation on the book, underlining the consequences of delimitation.

One of the graphs showed how the number of MPs belonging to the ruling party had varied every five years over the past 50 years. At some points, MPs from northern India prevailed, while in other years the ruling MPs came from a wider swathe of the country.