Why a scholar of citizenship is taking on Bengal SIR exclusions

For years, anthropologist Adil Hossain has studied the politics of citizenship and written extensively about the subject. But the special intensive revision of voter rolls in West Bengal made the 39-year-old scholar’s own life what he calls a “laboratory of citizenship”.

Despite possessing a passport and land records dating back to the 1950s, Hossain’s name was removed from the electoral roll of his village in the Uttar Dinajpur district of West Bengal, weeks ahead of the Assembly elections. On April 23, the day of the vote in his constituency, his parents and his sister went to the polling booth, while he had to stay at home.

“All of a sudden, it dawned on me that the things I have read about are happening to me now,” said Hossain, who teaches at a private university in India. “It was very unsettling. I felt a sense of alienation. This is hierarchical citizenship. Others could go and vote, but I could not.”

The special intensive revision removed over 91 lakh names from the voter list of Bengal. This figure nearly matched the Bharatiya Janata Party’s claims that there were one crore “Bangladeshis, Rohingyas” on the electoral rolls of the state.

The Election Commission, though, has not disclosed how many foreigners, if any, it identified through the exercise. Many of the names that it purged from the rolls were removed because of spelling errors. At least 34 lakh deleted voters have filed appeals before tribunals set up by the Supreme Court. Hossain is one of them.

Since the BJP came to power in the state on May 9, the new administration has taken a series of decisions that render deleted voters ineligible for welfare schemes. Some of these decisions have put deleted voters in the dock even as the tribunals have yet to hear their appeals and decide their fate.

“I had a sense of foreboding about what they [the BJP] would do,” Hossain said. Historically, he noted, such processes do not end with one step. “The SIR snatched away the right to vote. The next step is taking away social welfare benefits,” he alleged.

He is now preparing to legally challenge one such controversial order passed by the new government. On May 14, it had instructed officials to verify all the 1.69 crore caste certificates issued during the 15-year reign of the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress in the state.

The order, of which Scroll has seen a copy, stated that the caste certificates of deleted voters “shall be examined and may be cancelled”. Hossain contended that any such move would be unconstitutional.

“The SIR was carried out to draw up a list of the electorate,” he explained. “To link it with social welfare benefits is to create new categories of citizenship. This is how people are slowly pushed to the margins.”

Hossain argued that till the tribunal decides all appeals, the lives of deleted voters should not be impacted. His own appeal, which he filed over two months ago, has yet to be heard. He estimated that the tribunals could take eight to ten years to dispense with all the appeals.

More legal challenges

The scholar is hardly the only one petitioning the Calcutta High Court against the new government’s use of the roll revision exercise as the basis for administrative action.

On June 19, the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation had also filed a public interest litigation suit against the same order. In a press statement, the party said that “linking the inclusion or exclusion of a person's name in the SIR to the verification of caste certificates is wholly illegal and without constitutional basis.”

Separately, Isha Khan Choudhury, the MP from Maldaha Dakshin, has filed a petition seeking information about the status of pending appeals and asking for the process to be expedited.

“Nobody knows what is going on,” the Congress leader complained. “The process has completely slowed down. One top judge has resigned out of frustration.”

After the recent split in the Lok Sabha contingent of the Trinamool Congress, Choudhury is the only remaining Opposition MP from the Muslim-majority districts of Malda and Murshidabad, which saw high deletions during the special intensive revision.

He asked for more judges to be appointed for deciding the appeals of deleted voters. “They can’t drag this on,” he said. “They are playing with people’s lives.”

‘Living in terror’

Deleted voters whom Scroll met while covering the West Bengal Assembly elections echoed Choudhury.

Wasip Biswas, 32, runs a construction business in the border village of Debipur in Murshidabad district. His elder brother works in the Border Security Force. Both their names were struck off the rolls before the elections even though they possess land documents from over a century ago.

“There is no update about our appeals,” Biswas grumbled over the phone. “I am hearing that our driving licenses will be cancelled and we will not get ration. People are living in terror.”

Biswas mentioned the case of 12 deleted voters from Malda about whom there was constant discussion in his village. They were allegedly declared to be Bangladeshis and put in a holding centre after the elections. “They are all Muslims from one family,” he claimed.

Meanwhile, civil society protests for disenfranchised voters have more or less wound up in Kolkata. Quazi Mohmmad Alfred, a professor who actively took part in one such sit-in demonstration at the city’s Park Circus Maidan for two months till May, was candid when asked about this.

“We are not sitting there anymore,” he admitted. “It is unlikely that the new government will listen to us. One of our fellow protestors was even arrested by the police.”

Alfred suggested that it had become risky to protest in the state. “All activists have to think a lot before doing anything now,” he explained.

But Hossain, the anthropologist, was unfazed. He said he would go ahead with his petition against the government’s order regarding the verification of caste certificates because he was convinced that the Constitution was on his side.

While Hossain belongs to an Other Backward Class community, he claimed that his case did not stem from the need to safeguard personal interests. He pointed out that he worked at a private university and had not availed reservations for Other Backward Classes in his career so far.

“I am very privileged,” he acknowledged. “I have travelled the world. I have a degree from Oxford. I never thought this would happen to me.”

The roll revision showed that exclusionary processes can affect even privileged Muslims, he said. “We are in limbo. We don’t know what kind of rules they will make for people who have no voting rights,” he added. “This is slow poisoning.”