SIR legal but not fair: Former election commissioner Ashok Lavasa

New Delhi: Former election commissioner Ashok Lavasa has described the ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls as an unfair procedure being imposed on millions of people.

He said while the judiciary has validated the exercise and the government has termed it legal, the question is whether it is fair.

"Of course it is legal. But is it fair? That is the question. Because that is what justice is all about," Lavasa said while delivering the Jagdeep Singh Chhokar Memorial Lecture organised by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) here on Thursday.


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Lavasa said statutory institutions, constitutional bodies and governments increasingly appear to be functioning on the principle that whatever they do is right simply because it was legally permissible.

He described the SIR exercise as an unfair procedure imposed on millions of citizens and said "might is right" was an outdated concept. Institutions entrusted with the mandate of law must also uphold its spirit, he observed.

Justice, he said, was not merely about enforcing the letter of the law but also protecting its spirit.

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Lavasa said that while authorities may argue that everything being done under the SIR was legal, it was "definitely not fair."

He questioned the rationale behind the deletion of 13 crore names from electoral rolls and asked whether adequate efforts were being made to ensure that the exercise did not alienate voters.

Pointing to the growing anxiety surrounding the revision, Lavasa said that 33 per cent of people do not vote, and such large-scale changes could further "disenchant" citizens with the democratic process.

As the Election Commission (EC) was preparing for the SIR in Bihar, its officials had claimed that several nationals from Bangladesh, Nepal and Myanmar were found by its grassroots-level functionaries.

However, the poll authority did not share any numbers or proof of such people who were not eligible to be on the voters' list.

Opposition parties had dubbed the EC's claims as a ploy to carry out the SIR to target electors not aligned with the BJP and its allies.