Most migrant workers from poll-bound Bihar were unaware of the online portal where they could submit forms for enrolment in the electoral rolls, a phone survey by a voluntary group of academics has found.
Among those who had filled in the forms — by visiting their homes or through their families — about a third had none of the 11 stipulated documents, says the survey by the Stranded Workers Action Network.
The Election Commission’s special intensive revision (SIR) of the rolls in Bihar will therefore disenfranchise an overwhelming majority among the migrant workers, who are mostly poor and socially marginalised, the academics added.
Some 338 migrant workers from Bihar took part in the survey, conducted from July 19 to 21. Of them, 77 were questioned while they were visiting their homes in Bihar. Nearly 95 per cent of the workers were male.
With about 80 per cent of the respondents being Hindus and 19 per cent Muslims, the sample largely reflected the religious demography of Bihar.
The workers were asked whether they had heard about a portal for the online submission of the enumeration forms. Of the 248 respondents (among the 261 who were outside Bihar), 75 per cent said they had not even heard of the online portal. Only two had submitted their forms online.
Asked whether enumeration officials had visited their homes in Bihar, 53 per cent of the 333 respondents said “yes”, 23 per cent said “no” and 24 per cent said they did not know.
Among those who said that some or other official had visited their home in Bihar, only 29 per cent said the official had collected the filled-in form along with one of the SIR documents.
Another 45 per cent said the official had collected the filled-in form along with a copy of their Aadhaar card or voter I-card – which are not among the 11 stipulated documents.
Nearly 35 per cent of the respondents had none of the 11 documents while more than 96 per cent said they had Aadhaar cards and 81 per cent said they had voter I-cards.
“We find that 81 per cent of all those in our sample that turned 18 after 2003 (when the last SIR was done) have a voter ID. And, among them, one in three do not have any of the SIR documents,” the survey says.
Rajendran Narayanan, associate professor at the Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, who was part of the team that designed the survey, said that although this was not a statistically representative survey, its findings provided strong evidence for the possible disenfranchisement of lakhs of poor and marginalised people.