Accountability in SIR

The debate over the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls has largely been reduced to a national political confrontation, with allegations that the exercise is being used to selectively delete voters. But while that debate unfolds at the national level, Nagaland needs to examine its own electoral-roll problems with equal seriousness. The issue here is not merely who is being added or deleted, but whether the basic machinery responsible for identifying eligible voters is functioning honestly and efficiently. There have been repeated allegations of poor enumeration, with entire households reportedly overlooked while neighbouring buildings contain disproportionately large numbers of voters. In Dimapur, for example, reports have emerged of enumerators ignoring certain houses while registering unusually large numbers of people in adjacent buildings. More seriously, there have been allegations that non-locals were included in electoral rolls under local surnames, apparently to make their presence appear legitimate. These are not minor clerical errors. If true, they represent a fundamental failure of the electoral system. An electoral roll is the foundation on which democratic representation rests. A genuine voter wrongly excluded is denied a constitutional right; an ineligible person wrongly included potentially distorts the electoral process. Both failures are equally damaging, although they are often treated very differently in public debate. The human consequences of administrative negligence can also be substantial. When enumeration is conducted carelessly, an omitted name may not affect only one individual. Entire families can find themselves absent from the electoral roll, particularly where household-based verification is involved. For people living in remote or poorly connected areas, correcting such omissions can become a difficult exercise involving documents, applications, hearings and repeated visits to government offices. The fundamental question, therefore, should not be whether SIR is politically convenient for one party or another. It should be whether the exercise is being conducted according to transparent, verifiable and uniform standards. Nagaland cannot demand the removal of bogus voters while ignoring genuine citizens who have been excluded because an enumerator failed to perform his or her duty. Nor can concerns over possible exclusion become an excuse for retaining questionable entries. This requires accountability at the lowest level of the electoral machinery. Enumerators and supervising officials must be answerable for unexplained omissions, suspicious concentrations of voters and other anomalies. Where allegations of voters being registered under local surnames have been made, independent verification is warranted rather than administrative silence. The Representation of the People Act provides for continuous updating and revision of electoral rolls. Electoral-roll maintenance is therefore not a five-yearly ritual undertaken only before elections. It is a continuing administrative responsibility. Nagaland should use the present revision as an opportunity to repair weaknesses that have persisted for years. Ward-level information on additions, deletions and corrections should be made available for public scrutiny, while effective grievance mechanisms should allow wrongly excluded citizens to secure timely remedies. The integrity of an election begins long before polling day. It begins with an electoral roll in which every eligible citizen is counted and every doubtful entry is properly scrutinised. Nagaland’s challenge is therefore twofold: protect the genuine voter from arbitrary exclusion and protect the electoral system from fraudulent inclusion. Anything less risks turning electoral revision from an instrument of democracy into another source of public distrust.