Debnath, Avijit and Paul, Shanku
When citizens move: Migration and the perils of electoral roll revisions
- Economic & Political Weekly
- 61(19), May 9, 2026: p.86-90
Bihar’s Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, which flagged nearly 60 lakh names for deletion, poses a serious threat to internal migrants. This article argues that the SIR is not merely an administrative clean-up but functions as an effective citizenship test—an “NRC by proxy”—that shifts the burden of proof onto voters and penalises mobility. By turning administrative absence into political exclusion, it risks disenfranchising migrant workers and calls for rethinking electoral citizenship to ensure inclusion.- Reproduced
https://www.epw.in/journal/2026/19/discussion/when-citizens-move.html