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Introduction

India’s gradual move from broad jus soli citizenship to documentation-heavy verification has heightened the tension between democratic inclusion and administrative control. This shift becomes more evident as citizenship is increasingly mediated through paperwork, digital records, and bureaucratic scrutiny, influencing voter eligibility and democratic participation.

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SIR & Administrative–Democratic Tension

• Documentary Dependence: SIR demands documentary proof to verify voters, risking exclusion of migrants, informal workers, and the poor.
  Eg: Missing documents causing deletion fears during SIR in Assam and Delhi.
• Risk of Mass Deletions: Intensive verification may lead to large-scale voter roll deletions if documents are unavailable.
• Discretionary Powers: Booth-level officers gain wide discretion, creating potential for errors or bias in inclusion/exclusion.
  Eg: Inconsistencies in verification outcomes across states.
• Citizenship–Voter Link: SIR increasingly treats voting rights as contingent on documented citizenship, reshaping democratic access.
  Eg: Rising linkage between voter lists and citizenship documentation.

Contemporary Challenges in Citizenship Governance

• Documentation Gaps: Large populations lack birth certificates, land titles, or migration papers, making citizenship hard to prove.
  Eg: Low birth-registration in tribal belts.
• Internal Migration: Mobile populations face difficulty updating documents, risking disenfranchisement.
  Eg: Over 30% internal migrants struggle with address-linked documents.
• Digital Exclusion: Digitised records and online verification disadvantage those without digital access.
  Eg: Aadhaar-linkage errors in rural areas.
• Over-legalisation of Identity: Citizenship increasingly becomes a legal-bureaucratic identity rather than a democratic belonging.

Conclusion

A balanced citizenship regime must protect democratic inclusion while ensuring administrative accuracy. Strengthening last-mile documentation support, improving digital literacy, and adopting presumptive inclusion, rather than exclusion, can help reconcile democratic values with governance needs and ensure no genuine citizen is denied political membership.

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