Urban Apathy

The numbers emerging from Maharashtra’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls are striking, but they should not be read simply as a story of voter exclusion. They are also a warning about urban voter apathy and mobility that are making the electoral rolls increasingly difficult to maintain.

Across Maharashtra, 20.68 million electors, or 21.14 percent of registered voters, have been excluded from the draft rolls after they could not be traced at their given addresses. Importantly, this figure includes 1.76 million voters identified as duplicates or already enrolled elsewhere, putting the actual number of exclusions for other reasons at more than 19 million.

The urban numbers are particularly stark. In Mumbai, 34.75 percent of names have been deleted, while Thane has recorded the state’s highest proportion at 38.37 percent. These figures should prompt voters themselves to look in the mirror.

The Chief Electoral Officer has said in interviews that the draft is not the final electoral roll. The exercise has identified people who were absent, had permanently shifted, were deceased, were enrolled elsewhere or fell into other categories. In many cases, the problem is straightforward as people move cities, change homes, migrate for work and fail to update their electoral records.

But there is another practical complication. Booth Level Officers may visit homes during working hours only to find nobody there. A large urban population returns home after 7.30 or 8 pm. BLOs cannot realistically be expected to work indefinitely into the night, particularly when many are women. This creates a gap between an electoral system seeking physical verification and an urban population that is increasingly mobile and unavailable.

But administrative difficulties cannot become an excuse for complacency. Nor can citizens assume that having voted in the past guarantees their name will automatically remain on the roll. Democracy does not merely require the right to vote; it requires voters to take the elementary trouble of ensuring that they remain registered.

The election authorities have provided a clear remedy. Every voter should check the draft roll, verify the details and, if the name is missing, apply for inclusion through Form 6. Errors can also be corrected. The claims and objections process exists precisely because a draft roll is not infallible.

Political parties, civil society organisations and resident associations have a role here too. Instead of treating every deletion as either an administrative conspiracy or a routine bureaucratic exercise, they should help citizens verify their entries and assist genuine voters through the correction process.

The SIR has exposed a weakness in urban civic culture. Voters who care deeply about politics cannot afford to be indifferent about the most basic administrative act that makes political participation possible. The final electoral roll is not somebody else’s responsibility. It belongs to the voter.