Former civil servants and academics who have been critical of the NDA government have called upon citizens across political tendencies to unite and demand electoral reforms — primarily to modify the special intensive revision of electoral rolls.

The Constitutional Conduct Group of 181 former bureaucrats, as well as the Group on Federalism and Elections that has over 70 academics, public intellectuals, legal professionals, writers, artists and others, have issued a statement explaining what they believe is wrong with the SIR drive.

The statement said the Bengal polls had shown “dysfunctionalities and abdication of responsibility” by the Election Commission and the Supreme Court.

The statement said: “The ECI weaponised its lawful constitutional authority to introduce unnecessarily convoluted processes that enabled large-scale manipulations of the Electoral Rolls. These processes — particularly the SIR — had no precedent, no clear basis in law, and no verified necessity. To this day, there has been no explanation from the ECI for placing reliance on an arbitrarily designed algorithm with a set of irrational criteria to flag ‘logical discrepancies’... and effectively disenfranchising millions of (voters).”

It added: “By shifting the onus on the citizens to enlist themselves as voters and show documentary proof of their legitimacy, by overturning the natural presumption of citizenship that existed in their favour... the ECI ensured that the stated purpose of 'purification' of the rolls... was a mere pretext to ensure the mass exclusion of those who could have resisted a complete shift in the balance of power from a regional party to an ideologically driven, hegemonic, majoritarian force."