The Supreme Court continued hearing a batch of petitions which challenged the Election Commission of India’s move to carry out a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls in Bihar. The petitioners argued in front of the Bench that conducting SIR within such a short span will inevitably lead to exclusion of a massive amount of voters.
Justice Joymalya Bagchi highlighted the petitioner’s central concern as a conflict occurring between a constitutional entitlement and a constitutional right.
At an earlier hearing, the Bench had acknowledged that errors may have occurred in the draft roll and highlighted the ECI’s readiness to rectify the same. The petitioners maintained their earlier argument and reminded the court of its primary commitment to intervene in case the SIR process results in large-scale electoral exclusion.
Justice Bagchi said, “We get your exclusionary argument from Aadhaar. But the point on the number of documents is, in fact, voter-friendly and not against it. Look at the number of documents by which you can prove citizenship."
Senior Advocate A.M. Sainghvi presented the argument that Aadhar has been excluded from the list of acceptable documents despite having the widest coverage among the electors. On behalf of the petitioners, another argument came into light that most of the documents deemed as a valid pre-requisite for the process are only held by 2-3% of the people. Therefore, it was stated by the petitioners that the nature of the revision process was in fact exclusionary.
Justice Surya Kant intervened at the point where Senior Advocate Singhvi contended and cautioned against painting Bihar in a negative light.
Senior Advocate Singhvi stated that the SIR process effectively targeted an entire electorate in Bihar by placing the responsibility on the voters to produce one of the ‘indicative’ documents to prove their citizenship and reclaim their names on the electoral roll.
The senior advocate also took note of the fact that such a move ran contrary to the apex court’s judgement in Lal Babu Hussein v. Electoral Registration Officer (1995), which clearly distinguished between new applicants and existing set of voters. The judgement also prohibited the ECI from shifting the burden of proving citizenship onto those already enrolled.
