A recent Editorial Page column by Pratap Bhanu Mehta focuses on the announcement from the Election Commission, calling upon people in Bihar to prove their citizenship in order to confirm their right to vote in the upcoming state elections.
As other reports in various media have highlighted, the documentary proof needed for this exercise is likely to be concentrated among middle class and more wealthy persons, the very poor are highly unlikely to possess most of the documented proofs.
In fact, the most likely one, UID, also known by its brand Aadhaar, has been established in successive filings in the SC to be proof of nothing more than that the holder probably self-registered with the UIDAI. Even that is not really assured, the news media regularly reports on financial and property scams built upon fake UID. The editorial notes some of these issues, and here’s the thing.
It places the blame upon the inability, which Mr Mehta terms inefficiency, of the nation’s administrative framework, to issue valid documentation to people.
What is hugely notable in the editorial is the elephant in the room. This is the fact that it is not the administrative bureaucracy that has created this electoral rolls issue, it is the Election Commission of India.
And Mr Mehta, much like any other well informed person in India, has been watching how, over the years, the management of the ECI has been changing. Having seen it, to assign the blame for the decision to revise the electoral rolls a handful of months before statewide polling upon ‘bureaucracy’ is risible.
Or worse.
Mr Mehta once had the reputation for being more than sufficiently astute to understand the idea of India that was sought to be embodied in the Constitution.
Sadly, neither he, nor much of the media that once also worked towards that ideal, can lay that claim now.