It takes extra effort to understand the Election Commission’s game in the alleged VoteChori scam. The ECI has shifted the onus of proof of voting rights to the citizen and given itself the right to supervise citizenship while denying any intermediary such as a political party, NGO or helpful citizen the opportunity to help those deleted from electoral rolls, such as under the Bihar SIR, by refusing to transparently publicise deletion data. In the guise of weeding out illegal immigrants, fake voters and relocated citizens, it denies recourse to disenfranchised millions. This is akin to a court denying the right of a poor, illiterate woman to access a lawyer. The basic premise of transparency for collective action is a democratic principle; sadly, it has been torn to shreds by the ECI acting on the government’s diktat.
