Why connect voter roll revision to Bihar polls: Supreme Court raps election body
The Supreme Court came down heavily on the Election Commission of India (ECI) for linking the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar to the upcoming elections in November. However, the Supreme Court said there was logic and practicality involved in the Election Commission’s move.
Hearing a clutch of petitions challenging the ECI’s decision, a bench of Justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and Joymalya Bagchi said, “Your (ECI) exercise is not the problem, it is the timing… Why connect SIR in Bihar to assembly elections in November? Why can’t it be irrespective of elections?”
“The courts will not touch the electoral roll once they are finalised… which mens a disenfranchised person will lack the option to challenge it (the revised list) before the election,” Justice Dhulia said.
However, the top court said there was nothing wrong with purging the electoral rolls through an intensive exercise in order to see that non-citizens don’t remain on the rolls.
“What they are doing is a mandate under the Constitution. There is a practicality involved. They fixed the date because it was the first time after computerisation. So there is a logic,” it said.
Posing three questions to the ECI, the court said, “There is no question that the issue goes to root of democracy and about the right to vote. It is not just the powers of ECI but the process adopted. The next is the timing.”
Last month, the EC ordered a revision of the electoral rolls of Bihar, saying large-scale additions and deletions over the last 20 years had increased the possibility of duplicate entries. The move came under sharp criticism from the opposition, especially the Congress and the RJD.
Advocate Sankarnarayanan, appearing for the petitioners, called the exercise completely arbitrary and discriminatory.
“They are saying that before 2003 the presumption of citizenship is in your favour. However, after 2003, even if you have voted in five elections, it doesn’t matter whether the presumption of citizenship is not in your favour,” he said.
ON CITIZENSHIP ISSUE, AADHAAR
A major bone of contention has been Aadhaar and voter identity cards not being included in the list of 11 indicative documents that the applicants can produce during the exercise.
Advocate Abhishek Singhvi, appearing for the petitioners, called it a “citizenship screening” exercise. “The entire country is going mad after Aadhaar and then ECI says that it will not be taken,” Singhvi said.
Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, also representing the petitioners, also chimed in. “Who are they (ECI) to say we are citizens or not. The burden is on them and not me. They have to have some material in their possession to say that I am not a citizen,” Sibal said.
The top court questioned the Election Commission on its decision to exclude Aadhaar from the list of accepted documents.
To this, the counsel representing the poll body said Aadhaar cannot be used as proof of citizenship. The court said it was a different issue and the prerogative of the Home Ministry, not the Election Commission.
The EC counsel said the court could have a look at the revised voter list before it’s finalised and requested that the exercise not be halted.
“Let the revision exercise be completed. And then your lordships can look at the entire picture… We will show it before it is finalised,” the ECI counsel said.
