New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday told the Election Commission to stop treating its own cut-off dates as a threat and go out and find the roughly 43 lakh Delhi electors who have fallen off the rolls, asking that their names be published and that Form 8 stay open to them alongside Form 6.
"You are author of the documents. So better you don't go by time schedule part. Threatening line is - 3 days are left. You have to search out 43 lakh odd people that where have they gone?" Chief Justice of India Surya Kant told senior advocate D S Naidu, appearing for the Commission. "As ECI, you will search. Are they permanently shifted? Temporarily shifted? or still in Delhi? You develop mechanism."
The bench, also comprising Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana, was hearing a petition by transparency activists Anjali Bhardwaj and Amrita Johri against the Special Intensive Revision in Delhi, and in particular against the requirement that voters deleted from the roll file Form 6 - the form meant for first-time enrolment - to get back in. Advocate Prashant Bhushan appeared for the petitioners.
In a clarification that cuts at the heart of the Commission's defence, Justice Bagchi said the Supreme Court has not upheld the "Logical Discrepancy" category. It was permitted in the Bengal SIR only as an interim arrangement, he said, and because the Bihar SIR did not have an LD category, its legality was never adjudicated. "Bihar SIR is not a binding precedent," he said. "A man in 2003 list - how can this SIR reopen his entry on LD? A question which never fell for question in Bihar judgment."
The numbers aired in court set out the scale. Of about 1.45 crore electors at the start of the exercise, about 97 lakh responded to the enumeration forms and about 47 lakh did not. Of these, roughly 2 lakh are shown as deceased and about 43 lakh as permanently shifted or absent; within the 43 lakh, about 31.59 lakh are marked permanently shifted and around 11 lakh untraceable. Separately, about 33 lakh electors could not be mapped to the 2002 SIR, and 19.34 lakh were flagged as logical discrepancies - a category, the petitioners said, the Commission has never defined in any document.
Justice Bagchi was sharply critical of the structure. Forms 6, 7 and 8, he said, are "cast in stone" - requirements can be added, but the forms cannot be reworked - and he asked how a voter who has shifted can be made to file Form 6, which is meant for someone who was never enrolled. "This structural incongruity... will you say the person forever loses right to come in roll?" he asked. He also flagged Rule 13 of the Registration of Electors Rules, saying there must be some application of mind to why an elector who was given an enumeration form did not respond.
Mr Naidu said deletion is a "misnomer" at the draft stage, that the doors have not been closed and that anyone can seek inclusion until the date of nomination. "We are willing to give a form - it's just that don't call it form 6," he said, adding that he would discuss the suggestion of a residual category and revert. He said the Commission has held camps and thousands of booth-level officers have visited houses.
The court adjourned the matter for two weeks, asking the Commission to publish the list of the 43 lakh, make it available at booth and block level, and keep inviting both forms without a cut-off. "You see how to reduce this gap of 43 lakh," the CJI said. Justice Bagchi put the principle plainly: the right to vote is a vital right, and the Commission's job is to act with due diligence.
(With inputs from PTI and media reports)
Pioneer News Service (aggregated from courtroom reporting)