The Editors Guild of India on Sunday condemned the manner in which R Rajagopal, a former editor of The Telegraph, was “being treated by the bureaucracy that gets to decide who is an Indian citizen and who is not”.

On Saturday, Rajagopal said that he had been removed as a voter in West Bengal during the special intensive revision of electoral rolls in March, apparently because his and his father’s names could not be traced in the 2002 voters’ list.

Rajagopal said that his name had been excluded by the Election Commission citing “logical discrepancies”, which refers to situations such as a mismatch in parents’ names, low age gap with parents and the number of children of the parents being more than six.

He said that he had been facing problems while renewing his passport. While his biometric formalities had been completed on March 19, his application was not cleared at the police verification stage because his name no longer appears in the voter list.

Rajagopal, the editor of The Telegraph between 2016 and 2023, said that he was informed that the alternative documents he had submitted were insufficient.

“For all practical purposes, I find myself in a state of civic uncertainty although recently the government iterated that a passport is no proof of citizenship,” he said. “Much of my time is now consumed by efforts to reconstruct family records and secure documents dating back several decades.”

On Sunday, the Editors Guild said that despite decades of work in the public domain as a journalist and editor, Rajagopal had found himself not only disenfranchised as a voter, but also had been unable to renew his passport “allegedly due to an ‘adverse report’” from the Kolkata Police.

The police must have been familiar with Rajagopal as he was the editor of one of the city’s major newspapers, the guild said.

Rajagopal’s plight “highlights the misery that millions of Indians are being put through” because of the voter list revision, the news association said.

“If it could happen to someone like Mr Rajagopal, a known public figure, the fate of others who have similarly been disenfranchised by a bureaucratic stroke of the pen, and lacking the voice to seek redressal can only be imagined,” it said in a statement.

The guild called on the Election Commission “to display common sense – and sympathy” – and restore Rajagopal’s identity as a voter. It also urged the poll panel to “extend similar consideration to all those who have suffered a similar fate.

Voter roll revision and citizenship

The special intensive revision of voter rolls in West Bengal was carried out before the elections in April.

Final rolls published in February initially excluded more than 61 lakh voters, with the process continuing through supplementary lists and adjudication of about 60 lakh “doubtful and pending” cases.

By April 6, about 91 lakh voters, nearly 11.9% of West Bengal’s electorate before the revision process began, had been removed from the electoral rolls.

Ahead of the Assembly elections, about 34 lakh appeals were reportedly pending before appellate tribunals. Of these, 27 lakh were filed by persons who were excluded from the voter list. The tribunals set up as part of the special intensive revision process had allowed 1,607 names to be added back to the electoral rolls.

The voter list revision has taken place in several other states such as Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala in the past year. The third phase is underway in 16 states and three Union Territories.

On May 27, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls conducted by the Election Commission, saying that the exercise “advances the constitutional imperative of free and fair elections”.

However, the court said that the poll panel’s inquiries for the purpose of including a person in the voter list do not mean that it can decide whether the person is an Indian citizen.

On Wednesday, the Ministry of External Affairs reiterated that the passport is a travel document and not proof of citizenship.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

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