I am not qualified in law. However, I am familiar with the laws of our land because long ago, as a bureaucrat, I had prepared countless briefs for several attorney generals. I may not measure up to the Olympian human level in the eyes of our higher judiciary, but I don’t think I am a “cockroach“. Maybe I am a sheep – not a helpless, bleating sheep, but a protesting, questioning one, if ever there were such a thing.My protests and questions are based on the presumption that, as a citizen of this country, I have the right to question both the government and the judiciary when I fear that my very existence is being threatened. My protests and questions may lack a legal patina, but they come from a genuinely bewildered citizen.The Indian government has not released any reliable statistics relating to undocumented immigrants in India. Every available figure is at best guesswork. There is a 2018 statement by our home minister that the government had identified 40 lakh such persons in Assam. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has claimed that in West Bengal, the figures range from about 50 lakh to one crore. Going by the BJP’s narrative, let us assume it is one crore. Thus, if the BJP is to be believed, the maximum number of undocumented immigrants in India is likely to be around 1.4 crore, which works out to just 1% of our total population – a problem primarily confined to two states.Is it justifiable, in a country that prides itself on being democratic, to treat every citizen with suspicion just because successive governments have been unable to control immigration? What we are witnessing is 1.4 billion citizens being subjected to a potentially repressive and totally unsettling bureaucratic scrutiny, simply because the state cannot determine which of the remaining 1% are legal. In a true democracy, my citizenship – barring exceptional cases – is not bestowed. It comes to life when I am born and is inalienable from me. It is the very core of my being. It is who I am. No government that calls itself democratic can randomly demand that I prove it unless it possesses compelling, individualized evidence against me.Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has turned this premise on its head. In paragraph after paragraph of Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant’s 124-page judgment, the apex court noted that while an existing voter list carries a presumption of validity, that presumption is rebuttable. And who can rebut it? Any lowly bureaucrat appointed by the government to verify the citizenship of hundreds of persons like me. How does that bureaucrat rebut it? Simply by raising objections to whatever documents I produce to prove my citizenship, despite it being presumptive until that moment.Now, the Supreme Court has stated unequivocally that the Election Commission of India (ECI), represented by this very bureaucrat, cannot be the final authority to decide whether I am a citizen of India. That power, the Court says, rests with the Union Home Ministry. Yet, there is a long, interminable road between that local bureaucrat and the august Home Ministry. For a humble citizen like me, the journey is bound to be exhausting and frustrating.Let us say the ECI denies voting rights to a few crore persons – many experts have stated that the figure could be as high as 10 crore. If the great majority of them appeal to the Home Ministry, does it even possess the mechanism to decide their cases? In any event, the proofs submitted can only be verified by the local machinery, which rests entirely with the state governments. Will this not require a gargantuan bureaucracy at every single level? How can ordinary persons expect justice from governments as deeply prejudiced as the Union government and the state administrations of West Bengal and Assam?In fact, the example of Assam is a stark reminder of the dark road ahead for citizens whose credentials are being doubted. Dealing with a pool of 19 lakh people excluded from the National Register of Citizens (NRC) overwhelmed the state’s tribunal ecosystem, leading to decades of backlogs, conflicting judgments, and arbitrary procedures. Scaling this model to handle multiple states simultaneously would require hundreds of new tribunals, thousands of employees, and a humongous budget.What happened in West Bengal does not inspire any confidence either. The Supreme Court simply dismissed the denial of voting rights to 27 lakh citizens with the remark that such appellate processes would take time. Time, indeed, is the key factor. Given the current state of judicial efficiency in Indian courts, “time” in many voters’ cases is likely to mean their entire lifetimes.When the process ceases to feel like a neutral administrative exerciseAnother crucial question stares us in the face: how can citizens trust a process managed by state governments and the Union government when both are highly polarised? When the machinery of verification is controlled by regimes with deeply entrenched, conflicting political agendas, the process ceases to feel like a neutral administrative exercise. Even if we heroically assume that the Supreme Court is entirely in favour of speedy justice, the solutions it has hitherto offered are deeply disappointing.It came up with the idea of appointing retired judges as an ad hoc oversight layer. However, this panel could handle only a fraction of the cases, as was seen in West Bengal. When an exercise of this scale is carried out across fractured political landscapes, the institutional safeguards designed to protect genuine citizens will collapse under the weight of systemic bias and administrative chaos.What is conveniently forgotten is that the Supreme Court operates in a rarified legal world where institutional ideals are supposed to be sacrosanct, while you and I live in a world of bureaucratic bungling and political bias. A court may loftily declare that an aggrieved citizen may appeal, but if that citizen happens to be a daily wager, an agricultural labourer, or someone living in a remote village, it is impossible for them to waste time and spend money on expensive lawyers.For them, the process is the punishment. They will be impeded at every step by a political setup out to deprive them of their citizenship. It is simple: you cannot assemble a reliable system out of outdated and deeply untrustworthy components.I am dismayed to read CJI Kant talking about the ‘purity’ of the system. The very idea of democracy defies purity. It is inherently messy, and every democratic institution must be conscious of this and find solutions that do not undercut democracy’s very foundations. Professionally speaking, the CJI may be absolutely right if he is using “purity” in a clinical, mathematical sense – meaning an accurate, error-free ledger.However, when that legal text percolates down to a deeply prejudiced and highly weaponised administrative bureaucracy on the ground, the word “purity” loses its democratic context. It becomes a pretext for targeted exclusion. Our founding fathers envisioned an inclusive democracy, not a mathematical model detached from the real world.Despite its highly ornamental logical dressing, I fear the Supreme Court’s judgment will prove to be the death knell of our democracy. Voting is no longer a right; it is a reward for compliance. The SIR is not a one-time curse as, for example, Covid-19 was. It is a Damocles’ sword that will hang over us forever, forcing voters to live in constant fear.Above all, it is the most effective tool to disenfranchise anyone who is inconvenient to the ruling dispensation – the opposition, the minorities, the oppressed – in short, everyone who does not subscribe to its agenda. The Supreme Court’s prioritisation of a “pure list” over universal franchise will come in very handy for the ruling party. Democracy will be fully hollowed out. The frame will remain, but the substance will be entirely drained.P.A. Krishnan is an author in English and Tamil. With a postgraduate degree in physics from Presidency College, Madras and experience in academia, the civil service and scientific institutions, he writes frequently on science and public life.