Hello,
While many debate whether the Election Commission’s unprecedented Special Intensive Revision unfairly removed minorities from the voter rolls, there is consensus on one thing: it disproportionately targets women.
From Bihar to West Bengal, women have been disproportionately listed as dead, unmapped, duplicated, or under suspicion many have found. Far exceeding the states’ overall gender ratios. While marriage and migration explain part of this trend, it is also true that as states add multiple layers of documentation and verification barriers to the voter rolls, women are the worst affected due to their social and educational disadvantages.
Former Chief Minister of Bengal Mamata Bannerjee, and Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan, have all spoken against SIR’s propensity to target women. Now, it appears that ECI has decided to hide whether the exercise affects women. In its first checks for suspect voters in the third and final phase, has quietly dropped disclosing the gender of voters red flagged.
It might appear to be a benign change, but why is ECI so keen to hide the gender of voters it wants to check further?
Kolkata based not-for-profit Sabar Institute partially answered this question in one state. In Jharkhand, after digitizing the lists of unmapped voters across five assembly constituencies, they were able to identify female voters by pinpointing surnames used exclusively by women.
In three out of the five constituencies studied by Sabar, more than a quarter of voters had women only gender titles, far exceeding male gender titles. In one constituency, the number of women identified through their surnames was as high as 47 percent. In another the proportion of women with female only surnames is 45 percent. These proportions might seem lesser than the typical 50 percent female share. Remember that Sabar’s analysis cannot capture women present amongst those with gender neutral titles. Which means proportions are likely much higher.
Another thing clear from Sabar’s analysis was that lists of suspect or unmapped voters produced in each constituency were dominated by women, muslim, SC and ST communities.
Omission of gender from lists of suspect voters seems to be a pan Indian exercise. We confirmed as much with officials from six of the 19 states currently undergoing SIR.
Read my latest report done in collaboration with Sabar Institute: Election Commission Drops Gender Disclosures in the Final Phase of SIR
Readers might know Sabar Institute from their work in West Bengal. When state elections officials sought to corner suspect voters under a barrage of lists and criteria – Sabar Institute stepped in where most media couldn’t. It decoded the lists of voters removed or red flagged, and found that muslims and minorities were being excluded in far greater proportions than their demographic distributions.
As SIR unfolds in 19 states and union territories, Sabar plans to take its expertise nationwide. Donate to Sabar here to keep them going.
As for us, our work on SIR was championed and supported only through the generosity of our readers. If you like our work on elections please consider donating. We have more exciting stories on electoral rolls coming your way.
Warm regards,
Ayushi Kar
Reporter
The Reporters’ Collective