Retired civil servants of the Constitutional Conduct Group (CCG) have appealed to the public to pressure the Election Commission to amend its special intensive revision of poll rolls in Bihar.

The former bureaucrats, a total of 93 signatories, included former Delhi lieutenant governor Najeeb Jung, former chief economic adviser Nitin Desai, and T.K.A. Nair, the former adviser to former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

They explained: “Throughout, the principle followed has been that, unless anyone disputes their status, they are presumed to be citizens and therefore, attempts should be made to ensure that everyone is included as a voter.

“In fact, in complete contrast to the manner in which the ‘new’ Election Commission of India (ECI) is functioning, the attempt in the past was to see that no adult Indian was left out of the enfranchisement process and the
ECI took it as its solemn responsibility to include people residing in the remotest corners of the country as voters, however marginal their lives might be.”

The CCG added: “The ECI has exempted electors included in the 2003 electoral roll from furnishing any document under SIR 2025 other than ‘the relevant extracts of the said part showing their name in the 2003 electoral roll’…. Such privileging of the inclusions in the 2003 electoral rolls, over and above all electoral rolls published by the ECI in the two subsequent decades, is untenable, unjust and discriminatory.”

Citing the findings of a public hearing in Patna and news reports, the statement added: “It is especially reprehensible that this fraud is being committed under the direct supervision of the ECI, bringing this institution of eminence with a glorious past into grave disrepute. The continuation of this futile exercise and its proposed extension to the rest of the country, especially when all that is required is routine updation of existing data in the regular course of the ECI’s scheduled activities, poses one of the biggest threats Indian democracy has faced, from the very institution that is meant to uphold the system of universal suffrage.

“As our various petitions and pleas to the ECI in several matters relating to elections have been ignored and casually dismissed in the past, we are addressing this open letter to ‘We the people’ so that public opinion is mobilised and there is pressure on the ECI to take corrective action.”