NEW DELHI: Even as the Supreme Court resumed hearing in the Special Intensive revision (SIR) in Bihar, the election commission told it that there was no complaint in Bihar as only people in Delhi were concerned.
In an attack on the petitioners, the election commission said that the final electoral list has been notified. It further said no official complaint has been filed by voters in Bihar, but only some political parties and associations in Delhi are concerned.
A bench of Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymala Bagchi is hearing petitions challenging the SIR in Bihar.
“There are people who would be living unauthorised in India, they wouldn’t want to come forward, they’ll be exposed…let us at least have an illustrative list of people who have actually been affected,” the bench observed.
Justice Bagchi said it appears there was a 65 lakh deletion in the final electoral roll. “We said whoever is dead or moved is alright, but if you are deleting someone, please follow Rule 21 and SOP. We also said that whoever is deleted, please put up their data in your electoral offices. Final list appears to be an appreciation of numbers…there is confusion of general democratic process that what is the identity of the add-ons…is it of deleted names or new names?” Justice Baghi asked.
The lawyer for the EC responded, “Most are new voters.”
During the hearing, Justice Kant asked advocate Prashant Bhushan, who was appearing for the petitioners, about the affected people. To this, Bhushan gave a list of 65 people and said they can file an affidavit.
Bhushan also said there is a disproportionate deduction names of Muslims and women from the final voter list.
Justice Kant said there were some grievances related to SIR in Bihar, so the court monitored the exercise, but it is the domain of the EC to conduct SIR in other states.
The total number of electors in poll-bound Bihar has come down by nearly 47 lakh to 7.42 crore in the final electoral roll published last Tuesday from 7.89 crore before the SIR of the voters’ list carried out by the Election Commission.
The final figure has, however, increased by 17.87 lakh from 7.24 crore electors named in the draft list issued on August 1, which had removed 65 lakh voters from the original list on various accounts, including deaths, migration and duplication of voters.
While 21.53 lakh new electors have been added to the draft list, 3.66 lakh names have been removed from there, resulting in a net increase of 17.87 lakh.
