Poet Joy Goswami, 91-year-old Ashalata Bhattacharya, and 80-year-old Bela Chakraborty are today standing in the same line, trying to prove that they are citizens of this country. Their names should have been on the voter list in the 2002 elections. For unknown reasons, their names are missing. Now the responsibility lies on them to prove who they are.

This is not limited to just these three people. Poet and singer Anirban Bhattacharya has also been summoned for a hearing by the Election Commission. No one knows who will receive a notice and who will not. Every day, someone gets a call from their Booth Level Officer (BLO). They are told that some “illogical discrepancy” has been found in their name, and therefore they must appear at a designated hearing centre with documents to prove they are Indian citizens.

Although Election Commission rules clearly say that people above 85 years of age should be visited at home for voter verification, many elderly citizens are still being harassed. The most shocking reality is that people who have voted in this country for decades are now being forced to stand in queues and prove their existence with documents.

Many argue that the problem has arisen because current records do not match the 2002 voter list. But no one asks the most important question: citizens did not create these errors. These mistakes were made by the Election Commission itself. So why should ordinary people bear the burden?

During the hearings, the Election Commission issued a notification admitting that the technology used to digitise the 2002 and 2025 voter lists was faulty, which resulted in incomplete data and widespread errors.

Why Elderly Indians Are Being Asked to Prove Citizenship Again

The fear of losing citizenship is clearly visible on people’s faces. Despite enormous difficulties, they are still trying to reach hearing centres. Some are hiring ambulances with their own money. Some are being brought on stretchers. Others are somehow managing to come.

Sabita Naskar, who works as a cook in the Jadavpur area, has been asked to appear at the District Magistrate’s office in Raidighi, South 24 Parganas, her native place. She must take at least one day off work, but her employers are unwilling to grant her leave.

For a long time now, many have argued that the problem is not voter list revision itself. The real issue lies in the process, which introduces two unnecessary and unprecedented conditions:

• Filling special enumeration forms
• Mandatory submission of citizenship documents

Because of these requirements, anyone can be called for a hearing. If these two conditions are removed, voter list revision would not result in mass disenfranchisement.

Election Commission Admits Tech Errors Behind Missing Voter Names

The situation becomes clearer if we look at Bihar. When the draft voter list was published there, people were shocked to see 65 lakh names removed. After the Supreme Court intervened to control the damage, the final number came down to 44 lakh deletions.

In West Bengal, when the draft list was published, it showed 58 lakh voters as dead or migrated. Many people felt relieved that their own names were still present. But as time passed, it became clear that people were now being selectively picked from this draft list and called for hearings.

In Bihar, many explanations were offered. Some said there were too many duplicate or migrant voters. Others blamed administrative incompetence that inflated the voter list. Some believed that mistakes happened because Bihar was the first state to undergo this Special Intensive Revision (SIR).

However, after the Bihar election results, it became clear how the process was used. The same mechanism that removed voters in Bihar is now being given legal backing through Special Intensive Revision in states like Maharashtra, Haryana, and Delhi.

From Bihar to Bengal, How Voter Lists Are Being Quietly Shrunk

Across the 12 states where SIR is ongoing, nearly 6.5 crore voters have already been removed from earlier voter lists. More deletions are clearly on the way.

A closer analysis of the draft voter lists shows that these deletions have no real link to migration. States like West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh, from where large numbers of people migrate for work, have seen fewer deletions than states like Gujarat and Goa, where voter lists have shrunk sharply.

Large-scale deletions have occurred both in states where the number of registered voters was already lower than the adult population (such as Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh) and in states where voter registration was relatively high (such as Tamil Nadu).

The data also shows that women have been the worst affected. After this process, the gender ratio in voter lists has declined in every state.

Why Assam Lost Zero Voters While Other States Lost Millions

Many people ask whether voter list revision could have been done differently, without excluding so many citizens. The answer lies in Assam.

Assam is the only state where SIR was not implemented. Instead, officials carried out door-to-door verification, without making forms or citizenship documents mandatory.

Assam began the revision with 2.52 crore voters. About 10.56 lakh names were removed, while 10.55 lakh names were added. As a result, the final draft list still contains 2.52 crore voters. Assam is the only state where the net deletion is zero percent. In other major states, deletions range from 8 to 19 percent.

This clearly shows that when voters are not forced to prove citizenship through documents, disenfranchisement does not occur. Where such pressure exists, voters are being excluded—and that is the core problem.

Importantly, the Election Commission has never explained why this SIR was not carried out in Assam. There, voter lists were verified by visiting homes, which remains the only fair method of adding or removing names.

Those who ask, “What is the problem with showing documents?” must answer one question: if documents were not required in Assam, why were they made compulsory elsewhere?

The only possible conclusion is that the design of the SIR itself is flawed. By shifting the burden of proving citizenship onto ordinary people, it is inevitably leading to exclusions.

Today, while disturbing images of harassment continue to emerge, political parties have chosen an uneasy silence. The BJP argues that if people can go out to vote, why can’t they attend hearings? But if the Election Commission wants to conduct such an exercise, why should citizens bear the financial and physical cost?

This is ultimately about dignity and self-respect. Questioning the citizenship of a 70-year-old person is deeply humiliating. Expecting empathy from BJP representatives may be unrealistic.

Voting is a right, not an obligation. A person may choose not to vote. But forcing someone to prove citizenship is an insult. Even at this age, people are being made to prove that they are not Rohingyas or illegal migrants, but Indian citizens.

The same people were once forced to stand in endless bank queues during demonetisation, facing inhuman suffering. Did demonetisation bring back black money? Back then too, people were told that if soldiers could guard borders in the cold, citizens could stand in line. The same logic is being repeated today.

Again and again, ordinary people are being made to suffer.

The BJP may openly support this process. But other political parties claim to oppose it—at least on paper. So why are they silent? The Trinamool Congress demanded that political party representatives be allowed during hearings. The Election Commission refused.

As a result, not just poet Joy Goswami—any citizen can be excluded.