The Government’s Devious Plan For A Hindu Rashtra

The announcement by the Panchayati Raj minister Rajiv Ranjan Singh that voter cards would be used as ID for panchayat ministry benefits is an attempt to again exclude an entire section of people from the welfare programmes of the government. Among other things, the Ministry of Panchayati Raj coordinates and implements major national welfare programmes at the village level. We are talking about such schemes as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), renamed Viksit Bharat—Guarantee For Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Act, the Swachh Bharat Mission, PM-KISAN, etc. Under each of these schemes there are crores of people who benefit. Narrowing down the beneficiaries to those with voter ID cards alone is to deny an undetermined but substantial chunk of the population striving for betterment and upliftment from the very benefits that have been promised by the very government they have doubtless helped usher in. Such an exclusion is a double blow to large numbers of people, considering that about 13 crore people have been summarily, if not wilfully, deleted from the electoral rolls. That this announcement has been made more than once by the honourable minister speaks to a pre-determined objective of societal division that bodes ill, very ill. The very proposal must be condemned vigorously and outrightly.

The timing of the declaration bears some attention. It comes even as the Election Commission almost daily makes an about-turn on some of its previous positions on its voter vanishing act, no doubt under the pressure of public scrutiny and outrage that such brazen chicanery can be allowed to pass unchallenged. This is precisely what has been called out: an attempt to bring in the NRC or the National Registry of Citizens through the back door. The SIR was the first such attempt. It is now evident that other ministries are trying to add on to the Election Commission’s excesses to move to exclude many sections of society. It cannot be a coincidence that it has been repeatedly proclaimed in some quarters that the Aadhar is an insignificant document, which can be made at every street corner, and this in itself shows what the plan of the majoritarian government is. This plan has no answer to the question that Justice Ujjal Bhuyan raised outside the Supreme Court in a speech when he said that if a citizen is denied voting rights, then who is that person? Can there be people in India who are not citizens, having been denied both voting rights and other citizenship rights, as the Panchayat Minister plans to do? The Constitution does not provide for anyone who is not a legal citizen. Will statelessness become a part of an Indian’s life? Can such people be thrown out of the country? The plan to use the voters’ list as the primary and only citizenship card is unconstitutional and should be quickly nipped in the bud. Very quickly.