Former CEC Calls Electoral Roll Revision a Scam, Seeks Prosecution of the Commission

Opposition parties, civil-liberty groups, and voters who already distrust the present Election Commission tend to hear Quraishi as confirmation, not surprise. Intensive revision, in this view, is a way to knock genuine voters off the list—especially the poor, migrants, and people whose papers are incomplete—under the cover of “cleaning” the rolls. The appeal is pattern recognition: list revisions have long been fought as tools of inclusion or exclusion, depending on who is in power. The assumption is that the commission is no longer independent enough to run such an exercise in good faith. The trade-off is real: treating every deletion as malice can also protect inflated or inaccurate rolls.

Ruling-party supporters and voters who believe Indian rolls are padded with the dead, the duplicated, and non-citizens see SIR as something previous commissions postponed. Democracy, they argue, is distorted if ineligible names vote. Quraishi’s language is dismissed as partisan afterlife from a former official. This view assumes the current process is technically competent and aimed at accuracy, not outcome. Its trade-off is the opposite of the first: a zeal for purity can disenfranchise people who are entitled to vote but cannot produce documents on the state’s timetable.

Constitutional lawyers, some retired officials, and voters who prize the Election Commission as an institution may accept that SIR is clumsy or even unfair and still reject prosecution talk. Commissioners are not ordinary bureaucrats; making them criminal targets, in this reading, is how you destroy the last referee. The appeal is institutional memory: India’s EC credibility was built slowly and can be spent quickly. The assumption is that courts, Parliament, and public scrutiny are the right remedies. The trade-off is that “protect the institution” can sound like immunity for people who, if Quraishi is right, have already abused public power.

A more cynical public, including some journalists and political operators, treats the interview less as evidence about SIR than as a move in a long contest over who gets to define “electoral integrity.” Former commissioners have become commentators; parties boost whichever ex-official fits the week’s narrative. The quote travels because it is absolute. This view appeals to people tired of both “scam” and “cleanup” as moral slogans. Its assumption is that motive and media matter more than the booth-level files. The risk is obvious: if every institutional crisis is only theater, genuine list errors never get a hearing.