New Delhi: While the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has recorded thumping victories in West Bengal and Assam in the recently concluded assembly elections, the polls have also brought into sharp focus the role played by two special factors. This includes the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls by the Election Commission in West Bengal just months ahead of the polls, and the delimitation of constituencies conducted in Assam in 2023. While electoral numbers may focus on anti-incumbency as in West Bengal, or the success of welfare schemes and governance as in Assam, the role played by these two exercises in the two border states has larger ramifications for India’s electoral democracy, the legitimacy of the election process, and the road ahead.In a recent op-ed, political scientist Gilles Verniers had referred to academic Pippa Norris’ argument that an election is not a single event but a sequential chain including 11 links that stretch from the drawing of constituencies, the compilation of voter rolls, the counting of ballots, to the acceptance of results. Any violation of standards at any one link weakens this chain. Verniers said that while it is not that the elections do not have meaning, but “the analysis of the elections is completely tarnished by the default of procedures.”Speaking to The Wire on May 4, Verniers had elaborated, “It is not just individual links being weakened it is the legitimation of the entire chain in question. One underlying problem is when rules of the electoral game are unilaterally changed by the very actors who stand to gain from it.”“It is not just one problem in particular but it is a combination of factors which taken together affect the legitimacy of the whole elections. Starting with the attempt to change the electoral rolls through the SIR, and in the case of Assam it was the delimitation exercise done not by the autonomous delimitation commission but by the election commission again creating electoral advantage for one party, the BJP.”So how have institutions procedures raised questions in the conduct of these two elections?1) SIR in West Bengal, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu, but not in AssamThe SIR was first announced by the Election Commission in June, months before the assembly elections held in November last year. The Wire has reported that a look at election rules show that the term does not exist, even though revision of electoral rolls remains a legitimate and regular exercise undertaken by the Election Commission.While defending the need to conduct the SIR so close to the elections in Bihar, Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar had in October pointed to election laws.“On SIR being conducted before the elections, if you go by the Representation of the People Act, revision being conducted before the elections is lawful and has to be conducted before elections. To say revision has to be conducted after elections is not in accordance with law,” he said.Yet later that month, when the Election Commission announced the SIR in 12 states and Union territories including in poll-bound Kerala, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, it did not include Assam which was also going to the polls. Instead, Assam saw a summary revision of the electoral rolls. CEC Kumar then said that the poll body has decided to leave Assam out of the SIR, citing different citizenship criteria. The reasons for the exclusion of the only state the BJP was defending in this round of Assembly elections from the SIR were never brought out convincingly.“Under India’s Citizenship Act, there are separate provisions for Assam. Secondly, under the supervision of the Supreme Court, the checking of citizenship in Assam is about to be completed. The June 24 SIR order was for the whole country. This is not applicable to Assam. For this reason, separate orders for revision will be issued for Assam,” said CEC Gyanesh Kumar.Assam therefore saw just a summary revision, the Election Commission has continued to say that nationwide SIR was necessitated among other reasons including frequent migration, and wrongful inclusion of foreigners in the rolls. That Assam is a border state, where influx of alleged illegal immigrants was even a poll issue, but was not included as a part of the nationwide SIR, remained out of the exercise.Further, while the SIR has been pitched as the Modi government’s bid to “detect, delete and deport” policy, the poll body is yet to specify the number of foreigners found in the SIR conducted in any of these states and union territories.2) A distinctly different SIR for BengalYet the bid to weed out alleged illegal immigrants dominated the BJP’s Bengal campaign where the SIR exercise took on a distinct character, separate from even Tamil Nadu and Kerala, which also went to the polls with it.Unlike in other states, voters in West Bengal were required to not just “map” themselves to the 2002 electoral rolls, but had to battle a new and later criteria in the form of “logical discrepancy” which triggered duplicates and name-related mismatches that were amplified further by script conversion and rigid matching rules. The result was the electorate shrunk by about 90 lakh and 27 lakh voters were left to wait for their fate to be decided by 19 judicial tribunals less than two weeks before polls, with even the Supreme Court refusing to grant interim relief. The tribunals eventually decided on a miniscule number of cases before polling day.This unprecedented instance of disenfranchisement, while both the Election Commission and Supreme Court look away, under which the polls were conducted and a new government has since been elected, has cast a shadow on the election itself.3) Differential adjudication processVerniers pointed to the differential adjudication process in West Bengal and Kerala. In Kerala while about 36 lakh voters had discrepancies in the draft roll, the poll body served notices to all and the claims of over 98% were accepted by February, two months before the polls in April. In Bengal on the other hand, with weeks left before polls, 27 lakh were pending appeals before judicial tribunals. “In other states like Kerala where an effective adjudication has been put in place, the SIR was more robust. This has led to a considerable re-entry of voters. As a result fewer voters have been deleted in comparison to Bengal. We know this haphazard exercise has created an electoral advantage. Whether this is what has generated on its own, results that are very honest, I cannot tell. This is the heart of the problem that casts a shadow of doubt on the legitimacy of the elections,” said Verniers. The Wire has reported that numbers reveal that while the BJP’s victory was built on four major pillars: consolidation of Scheduled Caste votes, the dominance of Schedule Tribe support, urban and mixed-seat expansion, and district-level sweeps in key regions. The data also shows that in 150 seats – more than half of West Bengal’s 294 – total SIR deletions were greater than victory margins. Of these, BJP won 99, while in 2021, it had won just 19.4) Curation of voter lists Psephologist Yogendra Yadav told The Wire on May 4 that the SIR has introduced a “model of curation of voter lists” that completely overturns the presumption of democracy.“SIR has introduced a model of curation of voter lists. In this country we knew that voters elected the government. SIR has reversed the process. Now the government can decide who the voters will be. Once that is accepted it completely overturns the presumption of democracy,” he said.5) Extraordinary interventions In the case of Bengal, the Election Commission, empowered to make administrative transfers during the poll period, also ordered a large number of such transfers, not seen in scale in any other state. A record 2.4 lakh central forces were also deployed to the state during the poll period, in an instance of militarisation not seen before.“No state had more deletions after the draft rolls were released as in West Bengal. Of all the transfers, 95% of administrative and police officers were in West Bengal. For roll observers, there were 30 in West Bengal and 4 in Uttar Pradesh; 8,000 micro observers in West Bengal none anywhere else. Only in West Bengal we saw this kind of deployment of security forces,” said Yadav.“So what we are looking at is an extraordinary intervention by the Election Commission and central government which seem to be working in sync. In an election where the ruling party has extraordinary stake. So the credibility of the election is seriously under doubt.”6) Delimitation in Assam reduced minority dominated seatsThe picture in Assam is no less concerning from an institutional perspective. Following the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in 2019, the delimitation exercise was conducted in Assam in 2023, which modified its electoral boundaries in absurd ways, not respecting even geographical boundaries of rivers and states. Even though the total number of seats at 126 was kept the same, the exercise has effectively reduced Muslim representation in the state, and brought down the number of Muslim-dominant seats from about 30 to 23.Only 22 Muslim MLAs have been elected this time, all from opposition parties, with the BJP not even giving any ticket to any Muslim.While the exercise was conducted on the face of it, to protect the so-called indigenous identity, observers said that it was known from the beginning that delimitation would reduce Muslim representation.“From the beginning it was known that the number of Muslim dominated seats will be brought down after delimitation, the idea was to increase the indigenous seats,” Dhruba Pratim Sharma, head of Political Science Department in Gauhati University, had told The Wire before the election.7) Delimitation’s gains in electionsScroll has reported that the BJP-led alliance in Assam benefited from the delimitation exercise in 19 seats, which included five new seats created in the tribal areas, two former Muslim-majority seats that were reserved for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe groups and 12 other seats that saw a significant restructuring of demography.Analysis also shows that delimitation might have played a key role in dramatically reducing the presence of the main Bengali Muslim-oriented party, AIUDF, and expanding the presence of BJP’s ally in Bodoland, the BPF. At least half of the total number of constituencies that sent an AIUDF MLA to the assembly in 2021 were either abolished or redrawn. The party has won just two seats this time. And of the 10 seats that the BPF has won this time, 6 are newly-created.However, Yadav said that the BJP’s overall benefit in the state is not under question as much as it is in Bengal.“In Assam the BJP has benefitted from illegitimate drawing of boundaries and delimitation,” he said. “The illegitimate benefit that the BJP has received in Assam is of a smaller quantum. In the case of West Bengal the illegitimate benefit is more therefore the overall outcome is under question.”