Can the Election Commission duck these queries?
RN Bhaskar
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The government, in concert with the Election Commissioner, has been quite active in pushing through the “SIR”. The matter is now pending before the Supreme Court.
Irrespective of the court’s verdict, there are three questions to which the Election Commission needs to respond. The answers will determine whether (a) the Election Commission is truly committed to free and fair elections in India, and (b) whether the future of India will be that of a democratic republic or not.
The “SIR” or the Special Intensive Revision initiative is a scheme that is claimed to be launched by both the Election Commission and the Registrar General of India in charge of births and deaths.
The problem is that the SIR was hurriedly pushed through, just before the Bihar elections are announced. That has led many to believe that the entire exercise is an attempt to alter the electoral rolls in a way that it benefits the party in power at the centre.
Questions for the Election Commissioner
Basically, there are three questions:
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Since the EC was quite aware of the huge proliferation of Aadhaar cards and the large number of unaccounted deaths, why did it not refuse to hold the 2024 elections till this was set right? Did the EC allow fraudulent voters to participate?
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The EC knew that the only way to weed out such bogus numbers of Aadhaar card holders and unaccounted deaths, the Census would be needed. So, why did the EC not insist on the Census as a pre-requisite to the elections being called? Yet the EC went ahead and even asked for the linking of Aadhaar cards with Election cards. Why?
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Why did the EC decide to begin weeding out numbers through “SIR” for the Bihar elections in haste. Wouldn’t the Census route be better? And why only 1.17 crore, when there are at least 6 crore unaccounted dead? Does sound fishy, wot?
Why are the above questions crucially important? The explanations follow below.
Unaccounted dead and ghost Aadhaar cards
The fears that opposition parties harbour are not unfounded. In fact, as the sequence of events given below will show, the Election Commission was quite aware that the deaths being reported has been lower than actual deaths, and that the official count of deaths that took place during Covid was a lot smaller than what multiple surveys had shown. So, there is no way the EC could have been unaware of the large number of unaccounted dead, which were being added to the previous backlog year after year.
The Election Commission was also aware that the number of Aadhaar cards in at least nine states was higher than the populations in these states. This was revealed by the government in its statements before Parliament, hence was known to every senior bureaucrat.
There was also the admission by the government that the UIDAI had no mechanism to deregister the names of people who had died from the Aadhaar master list. This was stated by the government in a written reply before the Lok Saha on 4 August 2021 in response to Unstarred Question No. 2542 (https://sansad.in/getFile/loksabhaquestions/annex/176/AU2542.pdf?source=pqals). So, how did the Commission magically make this happen this time with the “SIR” exercise?
Issues flagged again and again
This proliferation of Aadhaar cards and the existence of the uncounted dead which also had ‘living’ Aadhaar cards posed a threat to both elections and democracy. This was highlighted by this author on 28 April 2023 through his article “Election peril, Aadhaar and the missing Census” (https://asiaconverge.com/2023/04/election-peril-aadhaar-and-the-missing-census/).
We reiterated the issues involved in another article on 22 July 2023 “How UIDAI has made Aadhaar meaningless and exasperatingly senseless” (https://asiaconverge.com/2023/07/aadhaar-niradhaar/ ).
The government’s refusal to authorise the holding of Census 2021 made the situation worse. In May 2023, EAS Sarma, former secretary to the government of India wrote to the Home Ministry asking for the Census to be released on a priority basis (https://asiaconverge.com/2023/05/eas-sarma-asks-home-ministry-not-to-delay-the-census/). Copies of this letter were marked “to the C&AG and the Election Commission of India (ECI) for appropriate responses from them on the issues involved.”. All of them kept silent.
On 17 March 2025, Sarma wrote to the Election Commissioner about the Aadhaar Cards and the Census (https://www.moneylife.in/article/aadhaar-ghosts-uidai-deactivates-117-crore-ids-of-the-dead-admits-crores-still-remain-active/77700.html), This was preceded by another letter to the commissioner on 2 June 2024 (https://www.moneylife.in/article/aadhaar-ghosts-uidai-deactivates-117-crore-ids-of-the-dead-admits-crores-still-remain-active/77700.html). The letter cites several other letters that were written even earlier to the commission about the dangers confronting elections in the face of these aberrations. None of the letters received any response.
Notwithstanding all these pleas, national elections were held in India in June 2024 (https://elections24.eci.gov.in/).
Linking Aadhaar and election cards
On 22 March 2025, we wrote (free subscription — https://bhaskarr.substack.com/p/linking-aadhaar-and-voter-ids-ushering) on the danger of linking the leaky Aadhaar cards to the election cards. It was a move that the Election Commission initiated. And now the Commission calls the same cards flawed!
Deactivation of Aadhar cards, finally
On 16 July 2025, UIDAI issued a press release through the Ministry of Electronics, government of India, that (https://uidai.gov.in/images/Press_Release-15.pdf) after due validation, around 1.17 crore Aadhaar numbers have been deactivated.
Media carried information about this (https://www.moneylife.in/article/aadhaar-ghosts-uidai-deactivates-117-crore-ids-of-the-dead-admits-crores-still-remain-active/77700.html) and pointed out that around 6 crore dead individuals’ cards had yet to be deactivated.
Conclusion
The entire sequence of events suggests that the Election Commission is not a neutral player. It has picked up justifications whenever it suited the ruling party, not necessarily a fair election process.
Obviously, the EC needs to do some explaining. And quickly.
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