On April 28, 1947, almost three months before India’s independence, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru while speaking on the citizenship issue in the Constituent Assembly said, “It may be that a time may come soon when it will be the highest honour and privilege for anybody, whether he is a Ruler or anybody else, to be a free citizen of a free India and to be called by no other appellation or title.”A day later Sardar Patel while replying to the discussion on the Interim Report on Fundamental Rights in the Constituent Assembly on April 29, 1947 very thoughtfully said, “It is important to remember that the provision about citizenship will be scrutinised all over the world. They are watching what we are doing…..Therefore, our general preface or the general right of citizenship under these fundamental rights should be so broad-based that any one who reads our laws cannot take any other view than that we have taken an enlightened modern civilised view.”Nehru’s words that the highest honour and privilege for any body flowing from she or he being a citizen of India or Patel’s utterances that our right of citizenship should be anchored in an enlightened modern civilized view got reflected in article 10 of the Constitution dealing with continuance of the rights of citizenship. It states, “Every person who is or is deemed to be a citizen of India under any of the foregoing provisions of this Part shall, subject to the provisions of any law that may be made by Parliament, continue to be such citizen”.SIR in Bihar violates enlightened views on citizenship lawThose articulations of Nehru and Patel in 1947 and the continuance of citizenship of every person of India who is or is deemed to be citizen of India under Article 10 assume enormous relevance in 2025 in the context of Special Intensive Revision(SIR) of electoral rolls launched by the Election Commission of India(ECI) on 25th June. Its order that those not included in the 2003 electoral roll of the State would have to provide documentary proof which, inter alia, would determine theirs and their parents’ status as citizens of India. Those unable to submit such evidence and other documents listed by the ECI could be referred to the Citizens’ Tribunal as suspected foreign nationals.When the Supreme Court heard the petitions challenging SIR in Bihar on July 10 and asked ECI why Aadhaar card of people are not considered for the revision of electoral rolls in the state, it very shockingly replied that Aadhaar card does not determine who is a citizen of India. To a further query of SC that ECI has no mandate to ascertain who is a citizen of India and it is the task of the Union home ministry to do so the ECI maintained a deafening silence. Now the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) has raised questions over the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in poll-bound Bihar and said, “The scope of the SIR must be clearly defined and must be limited to electoral roll re-correction and inclusion. It should be explicitly communicated that the exercise is not related to citizenship verification, and any field instructions must reflect this distinction.”It called for “the presumption of inclusion”, and said voters enrolled after the previous revision must not be required to reestablish their eligibility “unless specific and verifiable reasons are recorded” and called for a third party audit under the CAG to identify anomalies.Citing a Supreme Court judgment, the TDP asserted that the prior inclusion of a person in electoral rolls creates a presumption of validity and any deletion must be preceded by a valid inquiry. “The burden of proof lies with the ERO or objector, not the voter, especially when the name exists in the official roll,” it asserted.Those questions raised by TDP and often asked by civil society bodies after the SIR was launched in Bihar are anchored in the liberal and enlightened views of Patel on the citizenship issue and, as stated above, in article 10 of the Constitution mandating continuance of the rights of citizenship.Those Indians who have voter ID cards issued by ECI are deemed to be citizens of India. Such citizens as per article 10 are entitled to have the rights of citizenship without any burden of proof thrust upon them to establish their identities as citizens of India.Difficulties of submitting birth certificates flagged in Constituent AssemblyThe insistence of ECI that voter ID cards are not valid for those registered as voters after 2003 in Bihar goes against the Constitution guaranteeing continuance of rights of citizenship and against the liberal and enlightened views of Sardar Patel.On August 11, 1949 a distinguished member of the Constituent Assembly K.T. Shah, while participating in the discussion on several articles of the draft Constitution including that of 5-C (corresponding to Article 10 of the Constitution), flagged the point that it would be difficult for people to submit birth certificates of theirs and their parents for proving their citizenship status in view of the poor record of the country in that respect. He said, “…[E]specially in view of our country’s very poor registration system, where the, evidence of birth and death is not easy to obtain, I am afraid that the extension in this manner to inheritance of citizenship is bound to create difficulties especially in view of the circumstances that led to the partition of this country, and the aftermath of terror and migration that has followed that partition.”Those utterances are resonating in the context of the deepening trouble people are facing on account of ECI’s order to voters registered in Bihar after 2003 to produce theirs and their parents’ birth certificates to enlist them in the electoral roll of the State being prepared de novo under SIR. The ECI order to do so is contrary to the Constitution and aforementioned vision of Sardar Patel. It must reverse its order to make it in tune with the liberal and enlightened views sustaining citizenship laws.S.N. Sahu served as Officer on Special Duty to former President K.R. Narayanan.