EC has become partisan alleges Prashant Bhushan at Bengaluru seminar

    Bengaluru, May 10 (PTI) Eminent lawyer Prashant Bhushan on Sunday alleged that the EC had become a completely partisan institution and accused it of using the SIR exercise to “selectively exclude” minorities and weaker sections from electoral rolls.
    Speaking at a public seminar on 'Delimitation, Women’s Reservation Bill and Special Intensive Revision' in Bengaluru, Bhushan said the electoral process, functioning of the Election Commission, delimitation exercise, and implementation of the Women’s Reservation Bill posed “serious challenges to India’s democracy and federal structure.”
    “Today, we have a completely partisan Election Commission. It is effectively the BJP deciding who remains on the voters’ list and who does not,” Bhushan claimed.
    He alleged a lack of transparency in electoral roll revisions, polling data disclosure, and the functioning of Electronic Voting Machines and Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail systems.
    Bhushan further claimed that the SIR exercise was designed to exclude large sections of the Muslim population from the voters’ list and was aimed at denying voting rights to minorities.
    Tracing the issue to the National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise in Assam, he said around 20 lakh people were excluded because they lacked documents, but alleged that the outcome did not suit the BJP since a majority of those excluded were Hindus.
    He also claimed that during the SIR process in Bihar, people were required to fill lengthy enumeration forms and submit one of 11 specified documents to remain on the electoral rolls.
    “We found in Bihar that the percentage of the population possessing even one of the 11 documents demanded was less than 50 per cent,” he said.
    According to Bhushan, the Supreme Court later directed that Aadhaar cards also be accepted as valid documents, which reduced the scale of exclusion.
    Even then, he claimed nearly 10 per cent of Bihar’s population was removed from the draft electoral rolls for failing to submit enumeration forms.
    He further alleged that in West Bengal, authorities introduced a system termed “logical discrepancy”, under which voters were flagged for minor spelling variations in names, differences in documents, or inconsistencies in demographic details.
    “This process was targeted. The Election Commission used software through which it could identify Muslims based on names. Nearly 70 per cent of those classified under ‘logical discrepancies’ were Muslims,” he alleged.
    Bhushan also claimed that judicial officers appointed to review such cases disposed of them within one or two minutes each, resulting in the exclusion of 27 lakh people, many of whom were allegedly not given hearings or reasons for removal from the voters’ list.
    He further accused the Election Commission of failing to upload details of additions and deletions to electoral rolls on its website and of refusing to provide electoral rolls in machine-readable format, which, according to him, would have helped detect duplicate voters.
    “What we have witnessed is a complete lack of transparency, systematic methods to exclude targeted sections of people, deliberate retention of bogus voters, and the inclusion of bogus voters from outside states,” he said.
    Questioning the independence of the Election Commission, Bhushan referred to the 2023 Supreme Court judgment on the appointment of Election Commissioners and criticised the subsequent law enacted by the Centre that altered the composition of the selection committee.
    “The law removed the chief justice from the selection committee and replaced him with another minister nominated by the Prime Minister, effectively giving the government complete control over appointments,” he alleged.
    On EVMs and VVPATs, Bhushan questioned why VVPAT slips were not fully counted despite the availability of a paper trail.
    “If every EVM has a VVPAT paper trail, why are the VVPAT slips not fully counted?” he asked.
    Turning to the Women’s Reservation Bill, Bhushan said there was no reason why reservation for women could not be implemented from the next general election itself.
    He alleged that linking it to census and delimitation exercises effectively postponed implementation indefinitely.
    He also expressed concern over delimitation, arguing that southern states such as Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Andhra Pradesh could lose parliamentary representation because they had successfully implemented population control measures.
    Bhushan further alleged that delimitation could be used for “gerrymandering”, citing Assam as an example where constituency boundaries were allegedly redrawn to consolidate minority populations and secure electoral advantage for the BJP.
    Calling for public mobilisation, Bhushan said, “Citizens must come out onto the streets in large numbers in an organised and peaceful manner to defend democracy and constitutional institutions.”
    He also called for a Right to Employment law, abolition of exploitative contract labour practices, an end to “indiscriminate privatisation” of the public sector, and filling of vacant government posts.
    “Unless a large civil society movement emerges on the streets, we are witnessing the end of democracy in this country,” he said.

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)