IN THE given political situation in the country, it is unfathomable to say definitively if the Opposition parties would accept the verdict of the honourable Supreme Court that the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls is fully constitutional and that the Election Commission of India (ECI) is perfectly within its right and mandate to hold the exercise from time to time to ensure free and fair elections. In fact, what the the Supreme Court bench headed by none other than Chief Justice Mr. Surya Kant has stated, had been said time and again by every possible constitutional authority beforehand. Yet, the cantankerous Opposition had refused to see sense and correct its highly malicious stance on the issue.

 

No matter that politics, the honourable Supreme Court has now made it abundantly clear that SIR “breathes life” into mandate and advances the constitutional imperative of free and fair elections. This should be considered as the most critical development in recent times in India’s domestic discourse. Though all the petitions challenging SIR were perfectly legal, their very purpose was unfortunate -- in the sense all those petitions tried to create an unnecessary hurdle in the constitutional path of the conduct of SIR from time to time. Many Opposition parties used SIR as a tool to beat the Election Commission down and stall the exercise before the recent legislative elections. In fact, even on this issue, the Opposition was a divided house -- in the sense the issue was not raised in some States that went to polls, like Keralam and Tamil Nadu. That actually proved that the Opposition was using SIR only as a political tool without any legal and constitutional support for its argument against it. Yet, multiple petitions were filed in the honourable Supreme Court challenging the conduct of SIR. The honourable judges bunched all those petitions together and gave a common verdict that has held the conduct of SIR as a perfectly constitutional process. This verdict should, therefore, settle issue once and for all.

 

How the Opposition reacts to the verdict is not fathomable. Yet it is clear that the common people will not entertain any cantankerousness on the part of the Opposition on this issue. In the elections hereafter, the SIR issue will not be of much consequence. The Election Commission will conduct the SIR as per its schedule and will hold elections in a free and fair manner as per its mandate. Any attempt by the Opposition to raise the SIR issue will get rebuffed by the people all over the country. The exercise of SIR proved to be a boon for the country. For, in those many States where it was conducted, illegal names were pin-pointed and removed from the electoral rolls. This cleansing was most urgently needed since many vested interests had been pushing illegal people into official categories to be used as votebank. Besides, such people were also a serious security risk for the country and had to be thrown out. SIR triggered that process most effectively.

 

There are reasons to believe that the Opposition resisted SIR only because the exercise would have deprived it of its votebank -- which had been built over years (by importing illegal people from outside the geographical borders of India). There were other categories, too, of illegal names getting into the electoral rolls. The conduct of SIR ensured that all such names were identified and removed from the voters’ lists. Let us hope that the Opposition will learn the right lessons from the verdict of the honourable Supreme Court and cooperate with the Election Commission in the conduct of various elections in the country hereafter. It would be in the larger national interest that the Opposition understood the core purpose of SIR and allowed elections to be held smoothly at all levels -- from Parliament to Panchayat. That would add a tremendous value to Indian democracy as a healthy system. Eventually, it would also enhance India’s prestige internationally and tell the world what a fine kind of culture has evolved here.