Amartya Sen says West Bengal’s SIR is being conducted with insufficient time, risking voter exclusion.
The economist cites his own difficulties with documentation during the revision process.
Sen warns that the poor and underprivileged are most vulnerable to being left out of electoral rolls.
Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has raised serious concerns over the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in West Bengal, cautioning that the process is being carried out in undue haste and could undermine democratic participation ahead of the state’s assembly elections due in a few months.
According to PTI, the 92-year-old economist made these remarks during an interview from Boston, where he reflected on the democratic purpose of revising electoral rolls and the conditions required for such an exercise to strengthen voting rights rather than weaken them. Sen said revisions must be conducted carefully and over adequate time, conditions he believes are absent in Bengal’s ongoing SIR.
“A thorough review of electoral rolls done carefully with adequate time can be a good democratic procedure, but this is not what is happening in West Bengal at this time," Sen said.
“The SIR is being done in a hurry, with inadequate time for people with voting rights to have sufficient opportunity to submit documents to vindicate their entitlement to vote in the coming assembly elections. This is both unjust to the electorate and unfair to Indian democracy,” he said.
Drawing on his personal experience during the revision exercise, Sen told PTI that time pressure was evident even among Election Commission officials.
“Sometimes, the officials of the Election Commission themselves seem to lack enough time.
“When they questioned my right to vote from my home constituency in Santiniketan – from where I have voted earlier, and where my name, address and other details are registered in official records – they questioned me about my deceased mother’s age at my date of birth, even though, as a voter herself, my mother’s details, like mine, were stored also in their own official records,” he said.
Sen also described the documentation hurdles he faced, noting that such difficulties are common among citizens born in rural India. Reported PTI, Sen said he does not possess a birth certificate, having been born in what was then the village of Santiniketan.
“Like many Indian citizens born in rural India (I was born in the then village of Santiniketan), I do not have a birth certificate, and my eligibility to vote required further paperwork to be presented on my behalf,” he said.
While the matter was eventually resolved in his case, Sen said the experience left him concerned about those without similar support systems.
“Even though I could happily say (like the Beatles) – ‘Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends’ – I worried about others who do not have so many loyal friends. My friends helped me to get through the rigid gates of the formidable EC,” he said.
PTI reported that Sen was summoned for a hearing after the Election Commission flagged a “logical discrepancy” related to the age difference between him and his mother, Amita Sen, as recorded in the electoral rolls.
Asked whether the SIR process could offer political advantage to any party in West Bengal, Sen said he could not make a definitive judgment, stressing instead the primacy of democratic integrity.
“I am not an election expert, so I cannot answer the question with certainty. I have been told by those who seem to know more, that the BJP will benefit from the under-accounting.
“I don’t know whether that is true, but the real point is that the EC should not insist on a faulty arrangement and force our proud democracy to commit an unnecessary error, no matter who benefits,” he said.
On which sections of society are most at risk of exclusion, Sen pointed to structural inequalities faced by poorer citizens.
“An obvious answer must be the underprivileged and the poor. The documents needed for being allowed into the new electoral roll are often difficult to obtain for the underdogs of society.
“The class bias that may show up in the necessary requirement of getting and showing particular documents in order to qualify to enter the new voters’ list will tend to work against the indigent,” Sen said.
(With inputs from PTI)
