Backstory: Only Credible Journalism Can Solve the Mystery of SIR's Missing Voters

India is presently living through a mystery that could well have flummoxed Sherlock Holmes and taxed Hercule Poirot’s little grey cells inordinately. It’s an enigma that the country has been living with since June 2025, when the Election Commission of India (ECI), under its chief servitor to power, Gyanesh Kumar, announced that his organisation is undertaking a Special Intensive Revision (SIR). 

It was to be, the ECI maintained, a “neutral clean-up”, one in which “no names will be deleted” and “names will not be included”. It was also claimed at that juncture that all genuine electors “particularly old, sick, persons with disabilities, poor and other vulnerable groups” will not be harassed.

Today, eight months later, these words come back to us laden with irony.  The intervening period saw two major elections: one for the state assembly of Bihar, the other for the richest corporation in the country, the Bombay Municipal Corporation. Both verdicts favoured the ruling party but that of course should not surprise us. The next few months will witness some of the most portentous elections in the country because all the major states now going to the polls, except one (Assam), are currently ruled by the opposition whether it is Bengal, Kerala, or Tamil Nadu. 

At a recent public hearing held in Delhi, attended by 200 people and presided over by two former Supreme Court judges, Justice Madan Lokur and Justice A.K. Patnaik, besides noted academics – economist Jean Dreze and political scientist Nivedita Menon – (full disclosure: I was also a jury member), testimonies of people from ten states across the country revealed the bogus nature of the claims made about SIR when it was first introduced. 

What we heard from those who testified was that the SIR “clean up” was not “neutral”; the names of eligible voters were deleted and the old, sick and vulnerable were harassed. So damning was the evidence that the jury members were forced to observe that the “possibility of mass disenfranchisement is real and ominous” and that in order to fulfil the basic requirement of a credible SIR process, the exercise must be stopped until it is reconsidered and reworked.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty

Testimonies from the hearing proved how hollow were the claims of the ECI. First, the SIR process was clearly not “neutral”. The case of Ahmedabad’s Akbar Nagar, a basti in Vidhan Sabha No 50, Booth Number 173, is a case in point.  People who had lived here for 35 years had their homes demolished about a year ago and the high court had ruled that they be rehabilitated in different places. Once the SIR preparations began some 600 people of the 1206 original voters of Akbar Nagar – all Muslims – filled forms for securing their names in the electoral rolls but these forms were not accepted. 

The sitting BJP MLA had argued that since their homes were demolished, it was an indication that they were illegals and therefore their names must not be included. Sure enough, the draft rolls when they came out did not have the names of the 1206 original residents of Akbar Nagar. In effect, not only were their habitation demolished, their identities as citizens also disappeared.   

If the SIR cleanup was not neutral, it is also true that it has led to the deletion of the names of bonafide electors.  We heard Dharamchand, from Kotra district, Rajasthan, which adjoins Gujarat. He reported that thousands from his area cross the border into Gujarat to earn a livelihood as sharecroppers every year. The SIR process took place when such migration was in full swing, since it was the peak agricultural season. When these people sought to return home to ensure that their names were included in the electoral rolls, the landlords who had hired them refused to allow them to go back. “From our block, in total, more than 23,000 voters had had their names excluded from the draft rolls; the reason given for these absences was that they had shifted. But where they had shifted to, nobody seemed to care,” said Dharamchand. 

As for the vulnerable not being harassed, that too is far from the truth. We listened with deep concern to the online self-testimony of elderly Jeetni Devi from Bihar’s Fulwari assembly constituency. When the final electoral rolls came out, she found that her name had been deleted, since she had been classified as “dead”. Her anguish over this was so apparent as she explained how this meant that the pension she was receiving was stopped and her Aadhaar card, rendered infructuous. Today she is left totally bereft.

Just three stories that provide a glimpse into the ways that the dystopian world of SIR has rendered living, breathing citizens of India into zombies – the civic undead. What struck me, as I listened to these accounts, was why isn’t the media doing more to investigate the mystery of the missing voters as reports come in of crores upon crores of people being rendered without their vote and, ultimately, without a country? Questions are being raised. 

The Hindu editorial of January 22 asked a tough question: is the entire process to “clean the electoral rolls” a dragnet affecting genuine electors across 12 states”? The apex court of the country has just noted the ECI’s “deviations” during SIR cannot be “untrammeled or unregulated”. These are worthy attempts to bring greater transparency into the process. Yet it is the hard, long grind of capturing the hundreds of thousands of voices of those left out that will ultimately make a difference and that is a task only credible journalism can perform.  

§

Kashmiri dystopia

The Kashmir template of media control is being constantly fine-tuned. From charging journalists with Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), to internet blackouts becoming instruments of state policy, it was in Kashmir that media houses faced the full force of state vengeance for daring to publish material that countered the ruling narrative, inviting police raids and the forcibly shutting down of infrastructure and premises. 

Kashmir Times, a major source of independent news in the Valley had the experience of having its doors padlocked by the police. It was in Kashmir that the police invited people as “cyber volunteers” to do the job that the Chinese “50 cent army” once did: ordinary people encouraged to monitor the internet for “objectionable”, “anti-national” media coverage and to shape public opinion. 

It was in Kashmir that we had the first trial run of a “new media policy” that rewards and punishes; incentivizes and freezes. It gave local bureaucrats a free hand to flag any piece of published material as “anti-India”, leading to journalists being forced to confine themselves to reporting on apple prices and potato cultivation to earn a living.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.

Now, once again, the mind control machine located in the Valley has struck with the Kashmir police extending its dragnet far beyond. Journalists writing for national newspapers and outlets are now required not only to constantly pay visits to the Cyber Police Station in Srinagar, they are asked to sign a “bond” before a magistrate. The recent experience of Indian Express correspondent, Bashaarat Masood, is a case in point. He was told to appear at the police station and later taken to the district magistrate to furnish a bond stating (in Urdu) that he would not repeat his mistake. Until that point he did not even know what “mistake” he had committed. Turns out it was about a report seeking responses from politicians on the police compiling dossiers on the managements of local mosques. This report was enough to frame him in the eyes of the law enforcement as a “threat to public law and order”! Such action boggles the mind. 

Masood refused to sign the bond, but his state of mind can well be imagined. Such action severely compromises the ability of news gatherers to come up with independent reportage. Masood’s case, incidentally, is by no means the only instance of police over-reach. In mid-December, Jehangir Ali, The Wire’s correspondent, had his phone taken away by the police. 

It was only because the Wire went public with this illegal seizure that the instrument was returned the following day. And therein, perhaps, lies the way forward. 

If the media houses to which these journalists report, decide to take a pro-active stance and refuse to accommodate themselves to state action of this kind; if the public who consume this news speaks out and social media pages are inundated with stories on such episodes; there could be a significant enough blowback against such obstreperous police behaviour. The Editors’ Guild and the Press Club of India have rightly seen the move to punish Kashmiri journalists and the attempt to obtain from them affidavits under duress, as tantamount to coercion and intimidation of the media engaged in their legitimate duties.

§

Resist the rule of the rich

The title of Oxfam International’s new report is classic: Resisting the Rule of the Rich/Defending Freedom Against Billionaire Power. Indeed, in an age when the billionaire class is nurturing dreams of colonising planets as the world’s poorest get further trampled into the mire, this double-barreled title is just what the times need.

Oxfam has been tracking disparities for a long time. In 2020, an Oxfam India had observed that adding to the deep schisms in the country's socio-economic order was the fact that the unpaid care work that women do actually adds to their social devaluation: today there is “greater unpaid care work related violence in marital homes,” it noted.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.

Coming to Resisting the Rule of the Rich/ Defending Freedom Against Billionaire Power, there are some interesting observations here. It points out that “The number of billionaires has surpassed 3,000 for the first time, and the level of billionaire wealth is now higher than at any time in history. Meanwhile, one in four people globally face hunger.” What is striking in this mapping is the difference that US President Donald J. Trump has made to this exponential rise: “Billionaire fortunes have grown at a rate three times faster than the previous five years since the election of Donald Trump in November 2024.” 

The impact of this class of the super-rich goes far beyond their own individual wealth. As the study notes, their capacity to use their wealth to buy politicians, influence governments and “out-lawyer” the opposition, contribute to undermining justice and fair play within society. And, yes, their ownership of the media translates into a public endorsement of their success, rather than providing the necessary understanding of the ways in which they damage human progress.

§

Readers write in…

Attacks on Kurdish women

REPAK – Kurdish Women’s Foreign Relations Office – briefs us on the situation in Aleppo, Syria:

“I am writing to urgently to bring to your attention and that of your readers the violence being committed against women and to think together about what we, as women, can do in response. As you may know, the situation on the ground has become extremely serious. The Syrian interim government has launched what is effectively a campaign of violence against Kurdish regions, and at this moment, almost all areas that were previously liberated by the Kurdish people are under occupation.

The interim government is acting together with Al-Qaeda-linked groups, HTS and other jihadist and radical Islamist factions, with the support of Turkey. What we are witnessing today is painfully reminiscent of 2014. Once again, a fundamentalist mindset similar to that of ISIS is carrying out massacres against peoples, and especially against women.

Horrific images are reaching us: women being abducted, murdered, beheaded, and sold to jihadist leaders; civilians being killed; and at the same time, thousands of ISIS members who had been detained in prisons in Kurdish regions are being released. In many cases, prisons are among the first places attacked, with ISIS militants deliberately being freed. What we are seeing is a campaign of revenge against Kurdish women and the Kurdish people as a whole. These are precisely the areas where women’s leadership has been central and transformative. That is why women are being directly targeted. Sadly, we are once again witnessing scenes of mass violence that we hoped the world would never allow to happen again.

At the same time, messages of solidarity are coming from many parts of the world, and protests and actions are being organized internationally. Here, in India, we are currently working together with women’s organisations, institutions and feminist groups to respond to these developments.”

§

A piece that suffers from lack of balance

Amit Kamath from Saint Lucia expresses his disappointment with the piece entitled, ‘Manmohan Singh’s Unrequited Generosity: The Rise and Irony of Nitish Kumar’ (December 27): 

“This piece falls short of the standards of balance and independence that readers expect, and it risks undermining the credibility of your newspaper. While Dr. Manmohan Singh was undoubtedly a highly qualified and accomplished individual compared with several of his predecessors, it is equally undeniable that his long tenure as Prime Minister exposed significant weaknesses. A perceived lack of political authority allowed colleagues to exploit his leadership, contributing to a period marked by major corruption scandals. Moreover, India’s adversaries appeared to take advantage of this perceived weakness, which became particularly evident after the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the absence of decisive action against Pakistan.

Political analysis must also acknowledge a fundamental reality: there are no permanent friends or enemies in politics—only permanent interests. Electoral outcomes remain the most reliable measure of political credibility. In this context, Nitish Kumar’s record in governance and his performance in the 2025 Assembly elections speak for themselves. The verdict of the electorate leaves little room for doubt regarding his political relevance, while the same cannot be said for sections of the opposition, including leaders such as Lalu Yadav, and the Congress party, which has suffered repeated electoral setbacks. A more nuanced assessment grounded in political realities, rather than selective recollection, would have better served readers.”

§

Any answers?

Wire reader, Tanya Tirumalasetti, poses interesting questions related to the communist movement in India. While we do not ourselves attempt answers, we are placing the letter here for readers who may be inclined to do so…

“Greetings. I am seeking your explanation and analysis on a theoretical question related to the communist movement in India. The international emergence of communism is linked to the struggles of the industrial working class in Europe... and the ideology formulated in that context is available through Marxist literature. 

“However, my question is specifically related to the Indian context. There are two narratives regarding the emergence of the Communist Party in India (1920, '25). When did it actually originate? Secondly, 'On what basis is it possible to implement communist ideology in our country, which is different from industrial Europe?' Thirdly, India is primarily an agrarian society. Is it theoretically feasible to implement the Marxist principles that emerged in an industrial society ‘in the same way’ here? If not, what kind of theoretical reform or adaptation should be undertaken to align communist ideology with the specific historical, social, and economic conditions of India?

Thank you for your commitment to independent and critical journalism.”

Tail piece:

From the prescient Ravish Kumar comes this piece of wisdom: “Companies manufacturing mosquito-nets have thought more about India's poor than any government.”

Write to ombudsperson@thewire.in

The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.