The Kerala Assembly on Monday unanimously passed a resolution against the Election Commission’s decision to conduct a special intensive revision of the electoral rolls in the state, saying that the “hasty” move could harm the rights of citizens, The Hindu reported.

The resolution comes while such an exercise is underway in Bihar. It also comes amid reports that a special nationwide revision of the electoral rolls is expected to begin by October.

In the resolution on Monday, the ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Democratic Front and the Opposition Congress-led United Democratic Front said that it was “ill-intentioned” to conduct the exercise ahead of the local body elections and the Assembly polls in Kerala.

While the local body elections are scheduled for November or December, the Assembly elections will be held in 2026.

The resolution, moved by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, said that there was widespread concern that the exercise was a “backdoor” attempt to implement the National Register of Citizens, PTI reported.

The updation of the National Register of Citizens is an exercise to create a list of Indian citizens and to identify undocumented immigrants.

The register was updated in Assam in 2019, after a mammoth scrutiny of ancestral family documents to weed out “illegal immigrants”, and ended up excluding 19 lakh residents of the state. The updated list, however, has not been notified six years on.

The ongoing special intensive revision exercise in Bihar confirmed concerns about the exercise being carried out at a national level, the resolution passed in the Kerala Assembly on Monday said, adding that it also reflected a “politics of exclusion”, PTI reported.

The document asked whether the same pattern of “illogical exclusions” of names as seen in the electoral rolls in Bihar was being pursued on a national basis.

It also questioned the attempts being made to implement the exercise in poll-bound Kerala, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal while the Supreme Court is hearing a clutch of petitions challenging its conduct in Bihar.

Claiming that it cannot be viewed as an “innocent” move, the resolution claimed that there was fear that the poll panel’s attempt to implement the special intensive revision in a “hasty manner” was to “sabotage” democracy.

The resolution noted that a detailed revision of the voter list was conducted in Kerala in 2002, adding that it was “unscientific” to conduct the upcoming exercise based on this base document, The Hindu reported.

Under the revision process conducted in Bihar, voters born after 1987 were to produce proof of citizenship of either of their parents. The Kerala Assembly resolution said that this disregards the concept of adult suffrage. Voters born after 2003 were required to produce citizenship proof of both parents, it further noted.

These conditions could adversely impact the voting rights of minority communities, women and overseas electors, the resolution said. Such provisions, it contended, also violated the universal right to vote under Article 326 of the Constitution.

The resolution further expressed concern that the special intensive revision could be used by those attempting to revive the Citizenship Amendment Act, India Today reported.

The Act is aimed to provide a fast track to citizenship to refugees from six minority religious communities, except Muslims, from Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan, on the condition that they have lived in India for six years and have entered the country by December 31, 2014.

It was passed by Parliament in December 2019. The Union government notified the rules under the Act in March 2024.

Bihar voter roll revision

The revision of the electoral rolls in Bihar was announced by the Election Commission on June 24.

As part of the exercise, persons whose names were not on the 2003 voter list needed to submit proof of eligibility to vote.

The deadline for submitting claims and objections to the draft rolls was September 1, while the final list will be published on September 30.

Concerns have been raised that the process could disenfranchise many voters. The Election Commission has defended the voter roll revision as a clean-up exercise to remove names of the deceased, duplicate entries and undocumented migrants ahead of the elections in the state scheduled to be held in October-November.

The draft electoral roll published on August 1 showed that 65.6 lakh names were removed from the list.

Earlier in September, the Supreme Court directed the Election Commission to accept Aadhaar cards as a valid identity proof for the exercise in Bihar.

Also read: Why EC move to create new Bihar voter list has rung the ‘NRC’ alarm bell

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