BIHAR SIR: SC TELLS EC TO FACE QUESTIONS OVER VOTER LIST REVISION
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the Election Commission to be ready to face questions over the voter list revision even as it began hearing on the Bihar Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls.
The Special Intensive Revision of the voter list in Bihar has led to allegations of vote theft and bogus voters from the Opposition in Bihar ahead of the assembly elections. The EC claimed an exercise of such a nature is bound to have some “defects.”
The development came during a hearing on a petition challenging the ongoing Special Intensive Revision of the electoral roll in poll-bound Bihar, which has evoked controversy over alleged omission and addition of bogus voters in the state.
Senior advocate Kapil Sibal said that every person born after 1950 is a citizen of India, but there are serious flaws in the current process. Citing an example, he pointed out that in one small assembly constituency, 12 living people were shown as dead, and the booth level officer (BLO) took no action.
Senior advocate Gopal S. informed the court that 65 lakh names had been removed from the voters’ list, calling it a case of mass exclusion.
What Election Commission told SC
On behalf of the Election Commission, senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi said that this was only a draft roll and in an exercise of such scale, minor errors can occur, but it was incorrect to claim that people shown as dead were actually alive.
Justice Joymalya Bagchi remarked that if the preparatory steps preceding the draft roll were not followed properly, it was a serious matter. The court said that the names of people wrongly marked as dead would be corrected. The hearing resumed at 2 pm.
The EC said it was taking “every possible step “to prevent exclusion of any legitimate voters from the rolls.
In the previous hearing, a Bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi cautioned the poll body that the court would “not hesitate to act” if the revised list reflected “mass exclusions.” The petitioners have criticised the SIR process as a form of “citizenship screening.”
The Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), which has challenged the ECI’s June 24 order directing the SIR, last week moved a fresh application seeking directions to the poll panel to publish the names of roughly 65 lakh deleted voters, along with the reasons for deletion.
