Bihar’s SIR process reveals an exercise of illegitimate powers, ECI forcing district machinery to resort to unethical practices: CCG’s Open Letter

A group of former civil servants of the All India and Central Services who have worked in the Central and State Governments during their careers expresses serious concern on what appears to be an assault on the very foundations of Indian 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.

An extract of the full text of the open statement may be read here:

“          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.

“          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.

“          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.

“          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.

“          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, 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

“          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.

“          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.

“          In a Jansunwai (public hearing) held in Patna on June 21, 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.

“          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.”

The Constitutional Conduct Group states that, as a group, they have ‘no affiliation with any political party but believe in impartiality, neutrality and commitment to the Constitution of India.’

Ninety three signatories to the current open statement are listed below: 

Related:

Bihar SIR: 65 Lakh electors flagged for deletion, SC said “if there is mass exclusion, we will immediately step in”

ECI to SC: Voter ID insufficient for Bihar roll, defends citizenship verification power

Punjab University’s former dean writes to CJI: Bihar SIR threatens democracy, alleges ECI overreach & voter disenfranchisement

Non-Electors Within Electors: ECI reports over 61 lakh potential exclusions