When the INDIA bloc team visited Nirvarchan Sadan to express its anger over the manner the Election Commission of India (ECI) was seeking to undermine democracy through its unprecedented Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar, a few short months before the state goes to vote, it was coolly informed that it was dealing with a “new ECI”. Presumably, the “new ECI” has been mandated to upend elections in the country and Bihar SIR was the opening salvo of a process that would unravel with each consecutive election in this country. The audaciousness of the project is only overshadowed by its ambition. What is being envisaged is nothing less than the purging of the electoral rolls in a manner that would create a “legal” electorate that is more in sync with the ruling party’s political future.The euphemism of choice that the Election Commission has picked is that SIR is “a neutral clean-up”. There is a disturbing sub-text here: a clean-up implies the presence of something unclean – a subliminal call, as it were, to get rid of “undesirables”. To conclude who these “undesirables” may be is not algebraic topology. Media commentator Bharat Bhushan puts it out in plain terms in a recent Deccan Herald piece, “the unsaid assumption is that illegal Bangladeshi Muslims have entered the electoral registers in large numbers, helping anti-BJP parties.” This mix of undesirables could also include categories of people who have resisted the lure of the ruling party despite its double-engine gravy train, which is why the ECI came out with the rather effective sieve of 11 ‘legal’ documents that validate a voter. It ensures that the individual is privileged by birth, or by inheritance, or by education, and/or by occupation. B.R. Ambedkar had argued that every Indian has the right to vote, it is the sine qua non of a functioning democracy. The attempt being made here is to erase that argument.The Supreme Court’s observation that the ECI should include Aadhaar, EPIC (Electoral Photo Identity Card) and the ration card as voter IDs could upset this delicate apple cart, which may be a reason why the ECI has kept an eloquent silence on whether it will indeed acquiesce to this. Thus far, its steely resolve to carry on with the SIR exercise despite mounting and reasoned outrage, would signal that it is under enormous pressure to deliver on SIR. But while it is silent on the addition of the three documents that the SC would like it to include, the ECI has allowed itself the luxury of crowing over the apex court not having expressly suspended SIR. This indicates a new alacrity on the ECI’s part to shape the public narrative – the fuddy-duddy ECI of the past did not overly bother to burnish its public image. The “new” ECI, in contrast, possibly with the assistance of a sophisticated image consultancy firm, is now quite pro-active in putting out its side of the story. One has only to visit its website to perceive this. There, you will find information on how Chief Information Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar delivered the keynote address at a Stockholm International Conference recently. Guess what the topic was: “electoral integrity”. He was eloquent about how, in India, the number of electors have grown from 173 million in 1951-52 to 979 million today, through a process demonstrating “institutional foresight and unmatched scale”. If you go through the list of press releases put out by the ECI, you will note a sharp change after June 24, when it announced that it will be embarking on SIR to enable eligible voters “to exercise their franchise” and to ensure that “no ineligible voter is included in the electoral rolls”. Significantly, it adds that this is also to “introduce complete transparency in the process of addition or deletion of electors in the electoral rolls”. Do we conclude therefore that earlier revisions of this kind were opaque and malefide? The abruptness of the SIR move came across when a press release of June 18 had announced ‘ECI to fast-track EPIC delivery’ and that electors will get EPIC within 15 days of update in the electoral rolls. Five days later, EPIC was no longer regarded as a legal document for voter verification. The reasons for the change were duly listed: “rapid urbanization, frequent migration, young citizens becoming eligible to vote, non-reporting of deaths and inclusion of the names of foreign illegal immigrants have necessitated the conduct of an intensive revision”. Did these phenomena creep up over the last few days? Were they not present before the general election of 2024 or before the Bihar assembly polls of 2020? So how can they be presented as compelling factors for an urgent revision?Doublespeak interlace the ECI words: No names “will be deleted”, but “names will not be included” if the documents are not made available. Conspicuous is the tone of reassurance: All genuine electors “particularly old, sick, Persons with Disabilities (PwD), poor and other vulnerable groups” will not be harassed”, is the solemn promise. A press release of June 28 notes, “Out of the existing 7,89,69,844 electors, 4.96 Crore electors, whose names are already in the last intensive revision of Electoral Roll on 01.01.2003, have to simply verify so, fill the Enumeration Form and submit it.” This had some sections of the media jumping at the chance to cast the ECI in the best possible light: An India Today headline went: ‘Poll body eases voter roll update for 4.96 crore people…’ The effort to convey to the public that the process is not getting disrupted and no changes are being made is patent: “Initial Phase of Bihar SIR Completed/Printing & Distribution of Forms almost done/No changes made in SIR as being rumoured by some/1.69 Crore (21.46%) Enumeration Forms Collected/7.25 % uploaded on ECINET.”At every turn, this claim that the SIR operation is going smoothly is made: “As of July 7, more that 2.88 crore people have already submitted their enumeration form”; while a July 8 release maintains that “Going by the progress of SIR till 6 PM on July 08, it is most likely that the exercise of collection of Enumeration Forms will be completed well before the last day of collection i.e. 25th July 2025. The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Bihar, is progressing well with 3,70,77,077 Enumeration Forms, which is 46.95% of the total of 7,89,69,844 (nearly 7.90 crore) electors in Bihar, collected (at 6.00 PM) in the first 14 days since the issue of SIR instructions on June 24, 2025.”Given the stakes involved, not just opposition parties but several media organisations have pushed back with rigorous and commendable ground reporting. This steady stream of incontrovertible information pushed the ECI to come up with its own “fact checking”. One #ECIFactCheck went: “The claim that there are apprehensions of removing around 2.5 crore Indian citizens is baseless and misleading” with a visual of a tweet from Yogendra Yadav stamped ‘Misleading’. Yadav was quick to respond: “Will you allow me to fact check the claim (that over 36% of electors had submitted filled Enumeration Forms by 7 July) that you have made in this ‘Fact check’? I challenge you to make public the list of these names. Besides, you cannot refute my apprehension (of 2.5 cr people being disenfranchised) by citing a principle in EC’s order… My apprehension is based on official statistics about the coverage of the 11 certificates demanded by the ECI. Provide counter-evidence”. While no counter-evidence was forthcoming, tweets in support of the ECI were. Take this one from @deepanshah13: “Free and Fair elections cannot be done without Correct Electoral Roll. And to prepare Electoral Roll is Duty and RESPONSIBILITY of @ECISVEEP.”But will SIR result in “free and fair elections” or the reverse? The strenuous efforts of the ECI’s publicity machine to frame public rage as “misplaced apprehensions” have largely failed. The anxiety of possible disenfranchisement on ground zero is real, whether the ECI, its political masters, or its public relations apparatus choose to recognise it or not.§An investigative series that caught the world’s attentionWhile surveillance for political purposes has become almost pedestrian, we seem to have taken our eyes off corporate surveillance. On June 25, the One World Media Environment Reporting Award was given to The Wire, along with global media partners The Guardian, Le Monde, The New Lede, Africa Uncensored, The New Humanitarian and ABC News, for a collaborative investigative series on ‘Poison PR’ that focused on how environmental activists and thinkers across the world were shadowed and surveilled by an US-based public relations outfit, v-Fluence Interactive. The contribution from LighthouseReports/Wire, which was published in these columns last September, investigated among other aspects the Indian angle to the story (‘How a US-Based PR Firm Is Profiling Activists, Scientists Opposing Pesticides and GMO’, September 28, 2024). But, before we go ahead we need to know exactly what v-Fluence Interactive is. On its website it boasts: “Discover why top-name organizations rely on v-Fluence for deep intelligence analysis, strategy development and support that delivers measurable results.” As the Lighthouse Reports/Wire story observes, “v-Fluence also has links to corporate pesticide giants such as Syngenta which is currently facing a lawsuit in the US, with Byrne and v-Fluence as co-defendants. The lawsuit was filed by farmers with Parkinson’s disease who have alleged that their illness was caused by the company’s paraquat herbicide. They accuse Syngenta and v-Fluence of suppressing negative information on the dangers of paraquat, working to “neutralise” those who criticise it, and investigating the social media pages of people who reported injuries to Syngenta’s crisis hotline.”The investigation by Lighthouse Reports/Wire unearthed some uncomfortable facts: activists and scientists who have been vocal against pesticides were publicly identified. “Termed ‘Bonus Eventus’, the private, invite-only social network has a ‘wiki’ with profiles of ‘stakeholders’ that contains information of over 3,000 organisations and individuals including environmental advocates, scientists, politicians, civil servants, UN human rights experts and others who have criticised or opposed pesticides and/or GM crops.”Syngenta was in the eye of the storm after the Yavatmal pesticide poisonings in Maharashtra in 2017 which led to the deaths of over 20 farmers. This had led in turn to experts like Mira Shiva visiting the area. Shiva spared no words in criticising the GM-crop btCotton, which required a heavy use of pesticides. Unsurprisingly Shiva was profiled on the v-Fluence list. Among others that came for similar treatment was ecologist and seed conservator Debal Deb and social anthropologist Aninhalli Vasavi. The latter in 2013 had along with other scientists pushed the then UPA government to halt all trials of GM crops until regulatory gaps were addressed. Sultan Ahmed Ismail, who had also signed that letter, was also included.The Lighthouse Reports/ Wire also carried a response from v-Fluence which maintained that the “claims and questions you have posed are based on grossly misleading representations, factual errors regarding our work and clients, and manufactured falsehoods”. Now, eight years later, The One World Media Environment Reporting Award has underlined the importance of the story and revived interest in how publicity firms attached to powerful pesticide companies work to bury the malefic effects of their products.§Readers Write In…Understanding Jail and BailSalil Kumar P. (advocatesalil@gmail.com), lawyer based in Thalessery, weighed in on the presently urgent issue of bail and jail:“The Indian criminal justice system is founded on core constitutional principles such as the presumption of innocence and the protection of personal liberty. In this framework, the doctrine that “bail is the rule and jail is the exception,” coined by Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer, holds immense significance. Despite these clear constitutional safeguards and binding precedents, most of the lower courts across India often deny bail mechanically, without engaging with the broader human rights context. “Article 21 of the Constitution guarantees that no person shall be deprived of their life or personal liberty except according to the procedure established by law. Bail, in this context, is not just a matter of procedural law but a constitutional right rooted in the idea that liberty cannot be curtailed without due cause.“In several orders the Supreme Court has upheld this principle: The Krishna Iyer coinage cited above was articulated In Gudikanti Narasimhulu v. Public Prosecutor, (1978). State of Rajasthan v. Balchand (1977) clarified that mere allegations are insufficient to curtail liberty unless backed by compelling reasons. In Dataram Singh v. State of Uttar Pradesh (2018), the Court emphasised the importance of presumption of innocence until proven guilty and cautioned trial courts against rejecting bail arbitrarily. In Sanjay Chandra v. CBI, (2012), the apex court held that if the accused is cooperating and not likely to abscond or tamper with evidence, there is no justification for incarceration during trial. In Arnesh Kumar v. State of Bihar (2014) strict guidelines were imposed against arrest in offences punishable with less than seven years of imprisonment. In Hussainara Khatoon v. State of Bihar (1979), the Court declared that prolonged detention without conviction is unconstitutional and a violation of Article 21.“Despite settled law, bail rejections in trial courts continue to occur frequently. Mitigating factors such as the lack of prior record are ignored and the seriousness of the offence is overemphasised without proper assessment of flight risk or obstruction to justice. This affects the poor and marginalised disproportionately. The majority of inmates in our jails today are undertrail prisoners, a situation the Supreme Court has itself has termed “shocking”.Pre-trial detention without necessity is a direct violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which India is a party. Article 9 of the ICCPR provides that “It shall not be the general rule that persons awaiting trial shall be detained in custody.” The Indian constitutional guarantee under Article 21 must be interpreted in light of these international obligations.So how do we bridge the gulf between principles and practice? Judicial training must emphasise constitutional values and human rights. Reasoned bail orders should be mandatory, recording all relevant facts and reasoning. Legal aid must be strengthened, especially for the economically and socially vulnerable among the accused persons. In addition, supervisory mechanisms by High Courts should regularly assess bail practices in subordinate courts.Bail is not a matter of judicial discretion alone – it is a reflection of the constitutional promise of liberty and the presumption of innocence. Courts must honor this principle not merely in words but in practice. The phrase “bail is the rule, jail is the exception” must guide every judge, every day.§Glorifying Diljit DosanjhK. Karthik responds to the article entitled ‘Diljit Dosanjh’s Stardom Now Threatens the Gatekeepers of Indian Nationalism’ (July 2): “I must begin by congratulating your editorial team for bravely elevating Diljit Dosanjh–from singer of ‘Lover’ and the occasional Netflix ornament—to being the Che Guevara of Canada’s Surrey strip malls. It takes true journalistic courage to write a piece so passionately detached from reality that it makes Sardaar Ji 3 sound like Schindler’s List and Diljit like a political prisoner of the Indian deep state.“Diljit is a ‘global icon’ because he once waved a flag at Coachella?! And, apparently, not releasing a mediocre film in India is the highest form of political protest in 2025. Truly stunning.“Now, let’s clear a few things before you send this off to be nominated for the Pulitzer in Fiction: Dosanjh is to global cinema what soda is to champagne–bubbly, mass-consumed, and entirely forgettable the next morning. He may trend on NRI WhatsApp groups, but calling him a ‘global figure’ because a few American teenagers swayed to his music at Coachella is like calling Daler Mehndi a UN ambassador because ‘Tunak Tunak’ went viral in Croatia.“You’re telling me Sardaar Ji 3—a Punjabi fantasy-comedy franchise where Diljit talks to ghosts and rides CGI buffaloes—is now the biggest Sikh cultural export? What’s next–awarding Best Foreign Policy Contribution to Carry On Jatta?“The article reads less like journalism and more like a fan fiction fever dream written after bingeing Diljit’s Instagram feed.” §Endnote: The Wire did carry a report on the July 9 all-India labour strike called by 10 central trade unions to protest the Narendra Modi government’s “anti-worker, anti-farmer and anti-national pro-corporate policies”. But since it was filed before the actual event, it failed to mention a unique feature of this time’s protest: the presence of journalists’ unions. At Jantar Mantar, Delhi, the Delhi Union of Journalists (over 75 years old) and the Kerala Union of Working Journalists joined in the bandh for possibly the first time in the recent history of general strikes in the country. The reason for this was elucidated by A.M. Jigeesh, General Secretary, Delhi Union of Journalists. In a conversation with NewsClick, he said, “Press freedom in the country hinges crucially on two laws: the Working Journalists Fixation of rates of Wages Act and the Working Journalists… (Conditions of Service) Act. Both are now subsumed under the Labour Codes. This amounts to giving legal permission to corporate and authoritarian governments to finish off press freedoms. This is why we have extended our support and solidarity to this strike.”Write to ombudsperson@thewire.in