Amit Shah defends SIR, asks if illegal immigrants should vote in India

During a debate on election reforms, Home Minister Amit Shah said the Election Commission has the full mandate to conduct SIR under Article 326 of the Constitution

Home Minister Amit Shah on Wednesday defended the Election Commission’s ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, asserting in the Lok Sabha that the exercise falls within the poll panel’s constitutional mandate.

 

During a debate on election reforms, Shah said, "Election Commission [is] conducting SIR as it is its Constitutional mandate". He added that the EC has “full mandate to prepare clean electoral rolls under Article 326 of the Constitution".

 

After being completed in Bihar earlier this year, the exercise is currently underway in 12 states and Union Territories across India. 

Why does the government say SIR is within the EC’s mandate?

Rebutting the Opposition’s objections, Shah said he still believed that Parliament could not debate SIR, as the matter lay within the exclusive domain of the Election Commission.

 

Shah said that SIR was neither new nor unprecedented. "First SIR was carried out in 1952 when Jawaharlal Nehru was Prime Minister," he said, noting that from "1952 to 2004 no party opposed SIR as it is the process to prepare a transparent electoral roll".

 

How did Shah describe the purpose of the SIR exercise?

He further described SIR as a clean-up exercise of electoral rolls, adding, "SIR is conducted to delete names from the electoral roll of people who are dead and those who are foreign nationals".

 

“Should illegal immigrants participate in elections in India?” he said. He further claimed that the Opposition is raising objections because people of the country do not vote for them, and SIR will delete the names of illegal immigrants who back them.