Political activist Yogendra Yadav on Tuesday brought to the Supreme Court two people who have been declared dead in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral roll in poll-bound Bihar.
Yadav, who formerly worked as a psephologist, addressed the Bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi in person and said that the names of these two people do not appear in the electoral rolls because they have been declared dead.
"Please see them. These are declared as dead. They don't appear. But they are alive...see them," Yadav told the Court during the hearing of a batch of petitions challenging the Bihar SIR, legal news website Bar and Bench reported.
Yadav is one of the petitioners in the case.
Senior Advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, appearing for the Election Commission of India, termed the submission a "drama". Justice Bagchi said that this may have been an inadvertent error.
"May have been an inadvertent error. Can be corrected. But your points are well taken," the judge said. Yadav, however, said that the SIR, by design, was leading to mass exclusion.
"Vast exclusion has already begun...exclusion is much more than 65 lakhs. This is not a failure of implementation of SIR, but because of the fact that wherever you implement SIR, the result will be the same," Yadav said.
Yadav also said that people have never been asked to submit their forms in a revision exercise in the country's history.
"If it was done in 2003, the other side should point it out," he said, adding that the SIR had not led to any additions. This was an exercise in intensive deletion, he claimed.
"What was special in 2003 was that SIR was done apart from the word 'intensive' being used. This is the first exercise in the history of the country where revision has taken place with zero additions. Zero additions."
Yadav called the entire process "dreadful" and said that the SIR was the largest exercise of disenfranchisement.
"We also have confirmation that women have deleted more than men. 31 lakh women have been deleted...25 lakh men have been deleted," he added. Yadav also pointed to two people within the courtroom who were allegedly declared dead by the electoral authorities.
"The figure is bound to cross 1 crore. This is not an issue of revision. Please see them. These are declared as dead. They don't appear. But they are alive...see them," he said.
The Supreme Court, during the hearing, called the special intensive revision (SIR) row in poll-bound Bihar "largely a trust deficit issue” as the Election Commission of India (ECI) claimed roughly 6.5 crore people of the total 7.9 crore voting population didn't have to file any documents for them or their parents featured in the 2003 electoral roll.
During the hearing, a bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi remarked that it "largely appears to be a case of trust deficit, nothing else” as it questioned the petitioners challenging the Election Commission’s 24 June decision to conduct the SIR on the ground that it would disenfranchise one crore voters.
"If out of 7.9 crore voters, 7.24 crore voters responded to the SIR, it demolishesthe theory of one crore voters missing or disenfranchised," the bench told senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for petitioner and RJD Member of Parliament Manoj Jha.
Sibal, during the hearing, said that while in one constituency, contrary to the poll panel's claims, 12 people declared dead were found alive, in another instance, alive persons were declared dead.
At the end of today's hearing, Justice Kant thanked Yadav for his assistance and ‘analysis’. The hearing will continue on Wednesday.
Source: Mint
