The Supreme Court on 22 August directed the Election Commission of India (ECI) to allow excluded voters to submit claims through online mode besides making physical submissions in the special intensive revision (SIR) exercise of electoral roll in poll-bound Bihar.
A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi allowed claim forms to be submitted along with Aadhaar card number and any one of the 11 acceptable documents in the SIR, news agency PTI reported.
Next hearing in the latter will be 8 September.
Expressing surprise over political parties not coming forward in filing objections related to 65 lakh excluded voters, the top court directed the chief electoral officer of Bihar to implead them in the court proceedings.
“All the political parties shall file the status report by the next date of hearing on the claim form they had facilitated in filing by excluded voters,” the bench said.
receipt to the booth-level agents
The bench directed the election officials to furnish an acknowledgement receipt to the political parties’ booth-level agents, who submitted the claim forms of excluded voters physically.
Senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, appearing for the poll panel, urged the court to give the ECI a 15-day window to show there was no exclusion.
“The political parties are making hue and cry and things are not bad. Repose faith in us and give us some more time. We will be able to show you there are no exclusions,” Dwivedi said.
The ECI informed the bench that around 85,000 individual voters who were excluded in draft rolls had submitted their claim forms and over 2 lakh new voters had come forward to register their names in the electoral rolls under the SIR exercise in the state.
On August 14, the top court directed the poll panel to publish by August 19 details of the 65 lakh voters excluded from the draft electoral rolls in poll-bound Bihar to enhance “transparency” in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the voters’ list and allow Aadhaar as an acceptable document for identity proof.
Observing that the EC should put at rest the “narrative being built” against it, the bench had also ordered that the details should include reasons for their non-inclusion during the ongoing SIR exercise. “Transparency will create voter confidence.”
The revision of the voters’ list in Bihar–the first since 2003–has sparked a huge political row. The SIR’s findings have reduced the total number of 7.9 crore registered voters in Bihar, from before the exercise, to 7.24 crore.
The Court was hearing a batch of petitions challenging the ECI’s June 24 directive ordering an SIR of electoral rolls ahead of the upcoming Bihar assembly elections.
One of the petitioners, the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR), argued that the SIR can arbitrarily and without due process disenfranchise lakhs of citizens from electing their representatives, thereby disrupting free and fair elections and democracy in the country.
Political parties should assist
The Supreme Court also asked political parties to assist the people who have been excluded from the draft electoral roll during SIR in Bihar, legal news website Bar and Bench said.
However, it also noted the political parties’ submission that BLAs were not being permitted to submit their objections.
The Court thus directed all the 12 recognised political parties to issue specific instructions to BLAs to assist voters in submitting the requisite forms, along with the 11 documents listed by ECI or an Aadhaar card, to get themselves included in the voters’ list.
