A few weeks back, when a leading national daily launched a campaign highlighting what they called ‘Lost Votes’, it was like old wounds being reopened. The campaign attempted to draw attention to the countless people who are unable to vote because they are not at the place where they are enrolled as a voter.

I am a senior citizen, but I have voted only three times till date. Why? Because the rigour of my employment made me move across India ever so often that most of the times I was not even registered as a voter in the place of my employment and if registered, would have moved on to a new place before I could vote in the next round of elections at that place.

More than above however, my reopened wounds reminded me of the difficult journey I had to undertake to get myself and my family members enrolled as a voter, once I retired and moved to a new place to settle down. It took me 9 months battling the electoral authorities to get enrolled.

My experience made me study the problems associated with the voter enrolment process. Largely, there are three sections of the population that are unable to vote –

1) those who have never registered as a voter and hence unable to vote. This is the very basic problem of ease of doing business with Election Commission – how easy it is to get one-self enrolled as a voter?

2) those who are registered at their place of living but unable to vote as they are not around on the day of the voting. These people want the polling booth to be mobile – e.g. proxy voting, absentee voting, online voting, postal ballots and the like.

3) those who have moved permanently (or semi-permanently) from the place where they are registered as a voter (mostly their native place – their home town/village) and hence are unable to vote. Let us call these people migrants. These people require their vote/enrolment to move with them.

My interest lies in the last category of people.

Where Can One Vote?

There were close to 454 million Indians classified as migrants in the last census. Of these, 72 million migrated over one year back, 69 million over 5 years back and a vast majority, 291 million had been a resident at their present place for over 10 years. Only about 21 million had moved less than a year back.

Looking at it from another perspective, 217 million were females who moved to a new place due to their marriage. Of the remaining, 46 million had moved due to work/employment, 48 million had moved after birth and another 70 million had moved with household. None of these are temporary movements.

If the vast majority of the migrant population has moved on permanent basis, the demand for these people to be able to vote at their home towns or villages is mis-informed to say the least.

the demand for migrants to be able to vote at their home towns or villages is mis-informed to say the least.

Where should the interests of this permanently moved/migrated population lie – at their current place of residence or at their home town/village that they left permanently?

Assuming, for the sake of argument, that a voter continues to have interest in his home town/village. The question then arises is – On what basis and with what knowledge would someone vote at a place that he left long back? How well informed an individual is about the issues affecting the people/place he left years back, permanently? More importantly, from the point of view of the current residents and electors at his home town/village, why an outsider should, one who has moved out years back, be allowed to influence the election outcomes at their place.

In any case, as per electoral laws, a person to register as a voter, should be ordinarily resident in the constituency concerned. It is, therefore, clear that a migrant cannot continue to be registered as a voter at his home town/village where he is no more an ‘ordinary resident’. He can only register at a place where he ‘sleeps regularly’.

a person to register as a voter, should be ordinarily resident in the constituency concerned.

The Real Issue

The real issue is ease of doing business with Election Commission of India – I.e. timely and convenient way of registration of a voter at his current place of ordinary residence. Seen in this context, the issue of mobility of votes is indeed very real. Why should the transposition of votes not be automatic? Why should one get his current enrolment deleted before enrolling at the new centre? Why should he even be required to enrol again. It should just be a process of change of address.

Let us now examine the impediments faced by persons desirous of enrolment for the first time or re-enrolment at a new place due to migration.

Primarily, a person is requited to provide the following information for enrolment as a voter –

1. Name 2. Age/Date of Birth 3. Gender 4. Current Address

5. Permanent Address 6. Name of a Relative (immediate family member)

7. If the applicant is already enrolled elsewhere –

a. details of previous enrolment
b. address of earlier place of Residence

In addition a photograph, proof of age and proof of residence is also required (surprisingly, proof of identity is not required). A first-time registrant is also required to submit annexure III, whereas someone switching to a new constituency is required to submit Form No. 7 also. Thus everyone is required to submit at least two forms. But these forms are absolutely redundant as a provision for these already exists on Form no. 6 (enrolment).

While above requirements are fairly simple to comply with, problem arises in their enforcement on the ground. Some examples are –

a) The electoral officials ask for multiple proofs of address. Election Commissions says that it is solely the discretion of the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) to satisfy himself about the current resident status of a person seeking enrolment. However, they have issued no guidelines for the circumstances under which he may seek additional evidence. While it would be perfectly in order for ERO to ask for additional documents when in doubt, in actual fact it has resulted into a ridiculous practice where every applicant is required to produce multiple documents as a proof of address. Many a people are turned away after having stood in queues for long hours to bring additional documents, unnecessarily. Many of them may not turn up again.

b) Those applying for a change in constituency are asked to first get their names deleted from their earlier constituency. This is problematic for several reasons. Let us examine these.

Section 23(2) of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 states –

(2) The electoral registration officer shall, if satisfied that the applicant is entitled to be registered in the electoral roll, direct his name to be included therein:

Provided that if the applicant is registered in the electoral roll of any other constituency, the electoral registration officer shall inform the electoral registration officer of that other constituency and that officer shall, on receipt of the information, strike off the applicant’s name from that roll.

Thus it is clear that the onus of getting the name deleted from the other constituency rests solely with the electoral authorities and the applicant is only required to provide the relevant details of his previous enrolment. Form no. 6 already captures all the required details.

the onus of getting the name deleted from the old constituency rests solely with the electoral authorities

However, if the onus for deletion were to be on the applicant, as most of the EROs insist upon, how does one ensure that the concerned ERO acts promptly and deletes the name from the rolls of his constituency? In fact how does he even verify the genuineness of the request in the first place? Moreover, the deletion of the names from the rolls takes inordinately long time. Sometimes even years. Does this mean that the applicant will not be enrolled at the new place till such time? The electoral laws do not permit this, but this is what happens on the ground.

This brings us back to the core issue. Why not make the voter-id transferable across India, just like a bank account or a mobile phone number? Why should one even be required to enrol again? It should just be a process of change of address.

However, these changes, even if accepted for implementation, will take a long time to get implemented. But can the Election Commission address the ‘ease of enrolment’, in the meantime.

The Attempted Reforms

Election Commission of India claims that revision of electoral rolls has come a long way since independence of the country and evolved into a robust and institutionalized system. The Election Commission of India has indeed worked tirelessly to set up processes and rules/regulations to make it easy to enrol as a voter and made revision of electoral rolls an annual process with year-round registration of voters. However, these reforms take unduly long to percolate down and are at best half-hearted efforts. Let us examine how these reforms have been implemented on the ground?

Let us examine a major reform at ease of doing business – online application for registration as a voter. This is done through the National Voters’ Services Portal of Election Commission of India.

Information provided by Election Commission of India, in response to RTI query, regarding online applications received on its NVSP portal during the period 01/01/2017 to 30/09/2017 and their current status is so absurd that I am not even inclined to reproduce it here. Suffice it to say that the fate of these applications is not known to Election Commission of India as it considers that its role ends with forwarding the applications to the concerned EROs. It begs the question – How is the Election Commission of India fulfilling its objective of monitoring the adequacy, efficacy and efficiency of this portal and indeed of the EROs?

Let us now examine this with reference to another facet of these reforms – internal computerisation of the process of registration as voter. This is done through EROnet. Election Commission of India states –

“This year (2016), the Election Commission IT team has also created a web-based system named as ‘ERO Net’ to provide a platform to Electoral Registration Officers and other officials to process claims & objections received online/offline and to closely monitor the enrolment process throughout the country.”

Data provided by Election Commission of India, in response to an RTI query is tabulated below. (Please note that this data is for the applications received during the period 01/01/2017 to 30/09/2017. The numbers are relatively small because most of the states migrated to EROnet only in the latter half of 2017. The status of applications (approved/rejected/pending etc.) is as of April 2018.)

Most glaring is the unacceptably high percentage of rejections at almost 40% of the total applications received. There could be several reasons for that but how the root cause for such high rejection rate have been dealt with? Secondly, more than 5% applications were pending for over 6 months at least. This implies that despite all the information being available online, virtually no monitoring is being done. One only hopes that the situation has improved in the race to forthcoming national elections, however doubts remain.

Most glaring is the unacceptably high percentage of rejections at almost 40% of the total applications received.

Now, let us look at another attempted reform – the simplification of various forms required to be filled up for first time registration and for subsequent changes. Sometime in the middle of 2014 Election Commission set out to simplify most common forms to be filed for enrolment. The then CEC observed – “At present various forms are very complicated and unduly long, whereas the quantum of requisite information for above activities is very limited from legal point of view….. As such voters show indifference to registration”.

The simplification process went through various iterations for next few years but in the end they became even longer and more cluttered. Form 6 required for enrolment, which is the most common form in use, in fact grew in size and additional information such as ‘Permanent Address’ was included without any rationale. In fact this inclusion goes against the basic premise of the simplification process which was to prune them down to the bare minimum information required as per law. The rationale for continuing to ask for name of the immediate relative but removing his enrolment detail is also not clear. Form 7, which was meant for raising objections, has been modified too to include deletion of one’s own name from the electoral rolls of a constituency. This is strange because as per the EC Manual, primarily the applicant (claimant) is only required to declare whether he is already enrolled elsewhere or not. The rest of the job I.e. the deletion of the name from the previous constituency is the responsibility of both the concerned EROs.

‘Permanent Address’ was included without any rationale

Thus instead of simplification, the forms and the process became even more complicated.

Conclusion

‘Every Vote Counts’ should not remain merely a slogan.

While it is clear that the Election Commission of India, at the apex level, has made serious attempts at reforms to ensure that everyone eligible can enrol and indeed vote, it needs to examine why these attempts are not as successful on the ground as they should have been. Why ground level implementation is not in sync with the apex level objectives? ‘Every Vote Counts’ should not remain merely a slogan.

PS: This opinion piece was carried by Moneylife.in on 22/03/2019