MUMBAI: Nearly 80 Indian scientists from institutions in India and abroad have written an open letter calling for the scrapping of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), terming it as a mass disenfranchisement exercise. The scientists demanded transparency in electoral roll revisions, the restoration of wrongfully excluded eligible voters and safeguards against arbitrary disenfranchisement.In the letter, the scientists have expressed concern over the ‘summary exclusion of large sections of the citizenry from the electoral rolls through the SIR of electoral rolls’.Scientists from institutions such as IISER, Kolkata, HBCSE-TIFR, Mumbai, Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, Texas Tech University, US, University of Birmingham, UK, IISc Bengaluru, IIT-Delhi, New York University, University of Stuttgart, Germany, are among the signatories. They added that they have endorsed the statement in their individual capacities and that their views are personal and do not represent those of their respective institutions.
Calling the deletion of eligible voters among migrant workers, marginalised communities and vulnerable sections ‘arbitrary’ and ‘unjustified’, the letter stated that the move impacts the very foundation of democratic rights. They added that the ‘right to vote’ is a fundamental pillar of democracy. Recent Election Commission of India (ECI) data shows that over 13 crores voters have been deleted from the voters’ list so far.The letter stated that, just as every person is presumed innocent until proven guilty, in the legal sphere, no electoral revision can justify depriving citizens of their voting rights through cumbersome procedures, inadequate safeguards or a lack of meaningful opportunity to establish their eligibility.“We call upon the ECI and the govt to uphold constitutional principles. We call upon all democratic-minded forces and individuals to come together to defend the right to vote and to protect democracy in the country,” it added.
