Till the other day I had reason to believe that I was insulated from the slings and arrows inflicted by an oppressive regime on its hapless subjects. My smugness stemmed from the fact that I belong to that protected and despicable species – the bureaucrats, who have been working hand in glove with the governing political class in making life hell for the common citizens, particularly in the last awful decade.Long ago in the 19th century, Honore de Balzac defined the bureaucracy as a giant machine operated by pygmies. With the passage of time, the pygmies have only become more corrupt, more inept, more indifferent to citizens’ needs and totally servile to their political masters. Unsurprisingly, all members of the Election Commission of India (ECI) are former bureaucrats.So am I. But nemesis has caught up with me in the form of the SIR (Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls). To be precise, on April 7, I received a notice under Section 22 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 informing me that “it has been reported to the undersigned by the BLO that you are not ordinarily residing at the above (my permanent address), it is presumed that you have ceased to be ordinarily resident in the above-mentioned address. Therefore, the undersigned proposes to delete your name from the electoral roll …. on the ground that you have ceased to be ordinarily resident in the constituency.” The letter goes on to state that in case I have anything to submit in this connection, I should appear before the electoral registration officer on April 15, 2026 at 11 am, failing which the case will be decided without further reference to me.On receiving the ECI letter, I almost burst a blood vessel in outrage at the brazen fabrication. Significantly, my wife and soulmate has not received such a notice. (Not entirely in jest, she feels that respectability may also be a factor in deciding enfranchisement). Since my superannuation in 2011, I have been living for over 15 years in the same private residence. I have voted in every election since becoming eligible, and every time my name has been in the electoral roll with my bona fide address. The same address adorns my passport and Aadhaar card. Moreover, well into my 78th year, physical decrepitude ensures that I am mostly housebound but for the occasional outing. All things considered, there is no doubt in my mind that this is a deliberate, mala fide attempt to get my name deleted from the electoral roll.Also read: ‘Election After Largescale Exclusion Cannot Be Fair’: English Editorials Criticise EC’s Bengal SIRMy friends have advanced all sorts of hypotheses to explain my predicament. One conjecture is that I am a Christian and therefore anathema to this majoritarian government. There is also the theory that my purging from the voters list is a direct fallout of my political stance as a virulent anti-Modi critic. The grapevine talks of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) mapping their voters and sharing the data with their abetters in the Election Commission. Conversely, there is also a record of ‘undesirables’ maintained which is also conveyed. There’s no guessing on which list I figure. On the other side, the closet supporters of the regime believe it is a lazy mistake by some junior functionary of the ECI or some malfunctioning software. Whatever the reason, I am confident that because of my privileged position in this iniquitous society, the ECI will feel obliged to redress my complaint on the basis of my representation. And if that doesn’t happen, there are some idealistic young lawyers willing to take up cudgels on my behalf.But what of the millions of my fellow citizens who have received such notices but are powerless and at the mercy of the partisan umpires of the ECI? In Bihar, the SIR ultimately confirmed the deletion of 3,23,000 voters, of whom 32.1% were Muslims. There is ample evidence that the SIR ‘voter deletion’ exercise recently completed in eight states has resulted in mammoth exclusion of genuine citizens. In West Bengal, for instance, the names of 91 lakh voters have been deleted, of which a disproportionately high number are Muslims, roughly 33 lakhs. Right under our noses, the deadly trio – the government, the Sangh Parivar and their chief executioner, the ECI – have denuded our democracy of its essence by gaming the electoral rolls and disenfranchising millions of citizens who don’t subscribe to their ideology of hate, while concomitantly including scores of dud voters who would help inflate their score at the hustings. We are now a blue-blooded banana Republic!At one level, the SIR exercise is mere subterfuge. Consider the long list of 11 or 12 documents that the ECI has approved as proof of …what? Of this elaborate inventory, only t documents – a valid Indian passport, a birth certificate issued by municipal authorities and a citizenship certificate – are considered valid proof of citizenship whereas the remaining are nothing more than window dressing, merely proof of identity but not good enough to ensure inclusion in the electoral list. I am particularly exercised by the ECI-sponsored debasement of the Aadhaar card. Hitherto, it was the universal, all-purpose card issued by the government that could be accessed online and ensured ease in obtaining a passport, opening a bank account, for accessing government schemes and a lot else.But there is more. Last year, on a visit to Washington DC, I expressed a desire to have a flutter at the MGM Casino in Maryland. My wish was granted but at the entrance of the casino, I was asked for proof of citizenship. Having left my passport at home, I produced my Aadhaar card which was the magic bullet that opened doors in India. The security guard looked at the card quizzically and then pulled out a booklet that was a compendium of the specimen documents of citizenship proof of countries around the globe. And was I relieved when the specimen of an Aadhar card was exhibited as proof of Indian citizenship. And I was allowed to enter the casino.Also read: A New How-To for Delimitation That Balances Fairness and Works PoliticallyThe point I wish to make is that universally the Aadhar card has hitherto been accepted as proof of citizenship. Why didn’t the government and ECI clean up and iron out the flaws in the Aadhar card and upgrade it as proof of citizenship, instead of resorting to the convoluted exercise now being undertaken by the ECI? But I guess such a simple solution would not be welcome as it would inhibit widespread doctoring of the electoral rolls, which is the intent behind the present opaque system.Early this month, Justice B.V. Nagarathna, the one Supreme Court judge with impeccable credentials, exposed the rot in our electoral system with this scathing critique: “If those who conduct elections are dependent on those who contest them, the neutrality of the process cannot be assured.” It could not have been a more damning criticism of the diabolical jugalbandhi between the ECI and the government happening before our eyes. But she did not mention the nefarious role played by the custodian of the constitution in actively facilitating this macabre dance. Nor can I elaborate on it, lest I be hauled up for “a deep-rooted, well-planned conspiracy” to malign the august institution, which was the charge levelled against the authors of the NCERT book that mentioned corruption in the judiciary.Ever so often in the last horrendous decade, one has been reminded of George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 because of the striking parallels between that fictional tale and what’s happening in our benighted land today. The book describes the party’s practice of making people who were inconvenient and refractory to disappear from society, history and memory, effectively turning them to “unpersons”. That’s what is being done through the SIR exercise. A huge swathe of the population is being disenfranchised. To quote Parakala Prabhakar’s evocative phrase, the SIR is nothing short of “bloodless political genocide.”Mathew John is a former civil servant.