In 1894, Mahatma Gandhi described the Franchise Law Amendment Bill as “a legislative activity of retrograde character” and launched a heroic struggle against it after it was introduced in the Natal Assembly of South Africa by white rulers to take away the restricted voting rights of Indians on specious grounds. In his book Satyagraha in South Africa he wrote, “There is always a general presumption in favour of the right of the subject. So long, therefore, as the government of the day does not become positively hostile, the names of Indians and others could be included in the electoral roll, the above law notwithstanding.”Disenfranchising Indians in South Africa in 1894 and disenfranchisement under SIREventually Indians in Natal Province were disenfranchised by the machinations of White rulers. It is tragic that what the White rulers did in 1894 in South Africa in disenfranchising Indians has been done to West Bengal’s 2.7 million voters whose names have been removed from the electoral roll of the state for no fault of theirs and half a million added to it in an opaque manner by the Election Commission of India (ECI) headed by Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. This disenfranchisement of millions of voters compels one to call the SIR process, in the words of Gandhi an “activity of retrograde character.” How deletion of millions of voters helped BJPThe results of West Bengal elections declared on May 4 affirm the victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which won 207 out of 294 assembly seats in contrast to the Trinamool Congress’s 80. Based on the ECI data, Anant Gupta in his article published in Scroll.in persuasively argues that “in as many as 105 seats, the BJP won by fewer votes than the total number of names that were purged from the electoral roll ahead of polling.” “This analysis is based on the results published by the ECI. The data on SIR deletions was tabulated by the Sabar Institute, a Kolkata-based public policy research organisation. It is publicly available,” he remarked. He went on to assert that “the bulk of these seats are ones that the Hindutva party has never won before.”Also read: ‘Special Roll Observer’ of SIR is Appointed Bengal CM Suvendu Adhikari’s AdvisorAdditionally, an article, “Data Shows SIR Helped BJP Win Bengal” by Aparna Bhattacharya published in The Wire argued that “in 150 seats, more than half of West Bengal’s 294, total deletions were greater than victory margins, and BJP won 99. In 2021, it had won just 19 of these.”Leading jurist Kapil Sibal in his press conference on May 6 forcefully stated that in Bengal the fight of Trinamool Congress and other opposition parties was not against the BJP but against Election Commission of India through SIR and might of the Indian State apparatus operated by the Modi regime. He convincingly put forth the data that the constituencies where deletion of voters was less than 5000 BJP candidates won in 13 and in contrast Trinamool registered victory in one. He went on to add that where deletions of voters in the range of 5000 and 15000 took place BJP won 50 seats and Trinamool only 12; in seats where 15,000 to 25,000 voters were deleted BJP secured 47 and Trinamool won 19 and the winning figures for BJP and Trinamool in seats witnessing deletion of more than 25,000 voters are 95 and 51 respectively. Sibal then asked, “Isn’t it striking that BJP has won more seats than Trinamool in constituencies where deletions of voters have taken place because of SIR? What does such victory for BJP based on massive erasure of names of voters from electoral roll mean for Indian democracy and conduct of free and fair elections, described as basic structure of the constitution? Isn’t the victory registered amount to electoral fraud committed by disenfranchising millions of voters at the behest of ECI which implemented SIR under the supervision of Supreme Court of India?Such victory scripted by subverting universal adult franchise testifies to the charge hurled at India since 2014 that it has become an authentic example of electoral autocracy and its roots have been strengthened and deepened by BJP’s victory in West Bengal following the implementation of SIR. How democracy die at ballot boxIn the book How Democracies Die, authored by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt and published in 2018, the authors sharply wrote, “Democratic backsliding today begins at the ballot box.” Preceding this sentence the authors noted that, “Blatant dictatorship – in the form of fascism, communism, or military rule-has disappeared across much of the world. Military coups and other violent seizures of power are rare.”They proceeded to add, “Most countries hold regular elections. Democracies still die, but by different means. Since the end of the Cold War, most democratic breakdowns have been caused not by generals and soldiers but by elected governments themselves. Like Chávez in Venezuela, elected leaders have subverted democratic institutions in Georgia, Hungary, Nicaragua, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and Ukraine.” Seeing the manner in which elections are being conducted in India by disenfranchising voters to favour BJP and several instances of vote theft committed in many states of India and flagged by Rahul Gandhi to favour BJP the authors would add India in the updated version of their book. It is now important to reproduce the incisive words of Levitsky and Ziblatt as they observed in the book, “Elected autocrats maintain a veneer of democracy while eviscerating its substance. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are “legal,” in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy – making the judiciary more efficient. combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.”SIR was purportedly implemented for “cleaning up the electoral process.” Tragically it has hollowed out universal adult franchise by snatching away the constitutionally guaranteed right to vote and deepened the root of elected autocracy in India. Sadly, this is the real outcome of West Bengal elections and demolition of universal adult franchise and all concerned must strive to reclaim democracy and the process of free and fair elections which became a key factor in defining the idea of India. S.N. Sahu served as Officer on Special Duty to President of India.