Continuing Rightlessness in Kashmir and The Threat of Disenfranchisement in Bihar
Aug 01, 2025By PUCL Bulletin Editorial Board
This edition will focus on two significant landmarks: namely, the sixth anniversary of the abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir and the demotion of J&K from being a State to a Union Territory, as well as the Special Intensive Review process in Bihar.
The sixth anniversary of the abrogation is a moment which marks a continuing state of violation. In 2023, the Supreme Court set its imprimatur on the decision to abrogate, giving a veneer of legality to a bad-faith decision by the Union Government. However, the decision cannot legitimize the fundamental injustice of taking away the right of a people to represent themselves. The fact that a state was unilaterally converted to a Union Territory and Article 370 was abrogated without the consent of the people of Jammu and Kashmir does injustice to both the principle of democracy and that of federalism, underlying the fundamental legitimacy deficit.
In 2025, the horrific Pahalgam attacks happened, giving the lie to the state narrative of normalcy and pushing India and Pakistan to the brink of an all-out war. The various contributions in this edition will draw out the implications of Pahalgam for human rights. However, it should be noted that in spite of six long years having gone by, in the fundamental structure, the violations continue to belong to the same mould: denial of the rights of an entire people. It is in this context that we have chosen to reprint two essays by one of the foremost chroniclers of Kashmir’s contemporary travails, namely Anuradha Bhasin. While the first piece delineates the post-Pahalgam situation, the second piece, though written in 2024, is still very relevant in terms of the wider analysis on the stifling of voices of journalists, civil society, and continuing distress and discontent which remain in place in Kashmir today. We are also publishing other reflections on human rights in Kashmir today by those in Kashmir and outside Kashmir.
We are also publishing a piece in the Bulletin titled ‘Poetry as Resistance’ which goes to Kashmir’s poetic traditions to sketch out a strong tradition of freedom, which, though ‘shadowed by conflict,’ carries ‘hope like light filtering through chinar leaves.’ To read this section is ‘to listen—to Kashmir, through the voices that never stopped humming.’
This edition also focuses attention on the Special Intensive Review (SIR) which has been hastily announced by the ECI for Bihar, which faces elections this year. With this process underway, the question of political democracy and the principle that every person has the right to vote has now come under a cloud. The right to vote is now sought to be made contingent on documents which are difficult to access for most Indians. The SIR process is transforming universal adult suffrage from a fundamental right into a privilege. This illegal exercise is likely to result in the exclusion of voters and thereby defeat democracy using the very tools of democracy.
The SIR drive poses a challenge to the ‘right to have rights,’ namely the right to be recognised as a citizen. Keeping this in mind, PUCL joined other petitioners in challenging the constitutionality of the SIR process. The PUCL’s constitutional challenge to the SIR is based on the argument that the impugned SIR process represents a direct assault on India’s constitutional democracy, violating the grundnorm of popular sovereignty enshrined in “WE, THE PEOPLE.” By abandoning statutory house-to-house surveys for arbitrary document-centred exclusions, creating impossible timelines, and systematically disenfranchising marginalized communities, the Election Commission has perverted the constitutional mandate and inverted the principle of inclusion to that of exclusion.
However, it is apparent that the fight against the tool of disenfranchisement, which is the SIR, has to have a legal component but must also have a campaign, if not a movement dimension. It is imperative that this campaign dimension of the opposition to the SIR also be built up. On 24th July, the Bihar Unit of PUCL took out a massive protest march against the unconstitutional and anti-people Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the Voters’ List in Bihar. The march was joined by more than 400 men and women – mostly common poor living on the edge, the most vulnerable community who risk disenfranchisement due to this ill-planned and ill-timed exercise of voter revision.
There was also a day-long jansunwai organised by civil society groups which sought to document the ground experience of the SIR in Bihar. About 250 ordinary people from 19 districts across Bihar, mostly villagers and a majority of them women, shared their stories of the failure of the process till now. The jansunwai ended with a unanimous call to annul the SIR. A study of migrant workers by SWAN has also empirically demonstrated the low awareness of the SIR process and the documents required to complete the same, as well as a deep suspicion that this will become a mode of disenfranchisement. Similarly, the study by Sarfaraz also documents similar concerns of lack of documentation and poor information in some of the slums in Patna.
The state’s response to this exposing of the disenfranchisement which the SIR process means has been confused and heavy-handed. The filing of an FIR against senior journalist Ajit Anjum for his reporting on the failures of the SIR is indicative of an attempt to suppress the truth.
Finally, this month also saw the successful conclusion of the 17th PUCL National Convention in Ranchi on the theme of ‘Upholding civil liberties to achieve social, economic and political justice’. The conference thematic, ‘Upholding civil liberties to achieve social, political and economic justice’, points to how civil liberties are inextricably interwoven with the objective of achieving social, political and economic justice. The essence of civil liberties lies in the right to speech, the right to form associations, and the right to assembly. Thus, the right to social, political and economic transformation is embedded in the three associated rights of speech, association, and assembly. However, these three rights are increasingly under threat in states around the country through extraordinary laws (such as the UAPA, IT Act, NIA Act, state security laws such as the Maharashtra Public Safety Act and the Chhattisgarh Public Safety Act). However, increasingly one witnesses the ordinary laws being instrumentalized to unreasonably restrict the right to protest in states around the country where it is difficult to find a place to protest.
The conference report, the report of the General Secretary, and the Presidential Address, along with numerous responses to the conference, will be published in the next Bulletin.