Refusing to entertain pleas seeking a re-poll, supplementary poll or a stay on the declaration of the results of the lok Sabha polls in Mumbai and Pune, the Bombay High Court on Monday asked the Election Commission (ECI) to undertake a revision of electoral rolls with proper publicity before the Maharashtra Assembly polls to be held later this year.
Admitting a bunch of public interest litigations (PIls) filed after the lok Sabha elections in Pune on April 17 and in Mumbai on April 24 challenging the deletion of nearly "half a million" names from the voters’ lists in Mumbai and Pune, a HC division bench Justices M S Sonak and A S Oka declined to intervene in the lok Sabha poll process in the two cities.
Veteran actor Amol Palekar, whose name too was missing and could not vote in Pune, was present in the courtroom when the HC bench rejected the challenge to validity of Section 23(3) of the Representation of People Act, 1950 and Article 329 of the Constitution of India.The PIls had assumed significance in the light of a clarification given by the Chief Electoral Officer of Maharashtra that 57 lakh names had been deleted from the electoral rolls because of various reasons. A majority of voters’ names that were deleted were from Pune, six constituencies of Mumbai, four constituencies of Thane district, Nashik and Nagpur.
Reading out the operative part of its ruling on PIls filed by Pune-based retired IAS officer Arun Bhatia, and Mumbai-based Action for Good Governance and Networking in India (AGNI) among others, the HC bench said: “As of today, there is no notification declaring any elections to the Maharashtra State Assembly. In such circumstances, we are satisfied that there are several provisions both under the said Representation of People Act as well as rules which would enable the respondents (EC) to undertake the exercise of revision of electoral rolls, so that names of persons which have been deleted, can be once again included, subject of course to necessary compliance and eligibility requirements as prescribed under the law.”
Directing the Election Commission to issue notices /advertisements in leading English and vernacular newspapers on the impending revision of electoral rolls, the HC bench observed: “This (advertisements) is in addition to the usual mode of publication of notices on notice boards and websites. We make it clear that this exercise shall have no nexus with the lok Sabha 2014 elections, for which polling has been concluded on at Pune and at Mumbai”.
The petitioners had prayed the high court to intervene in the lok Sabha election process and direct the EC to conduct “supplemental polling” to enable missing voters to cast their votes before the May 16 counting day. One of the petitions also demanded a stay on the May 16 result declaration, and demanded a Special Investigation Team probe into the “electoral scam”.
Contesting the maintainability of the PIls, Maharashtra’s Advocate General Darius Khambata had submitted that the provisions of the Representation of People Act “provide for alternate, efficacious and effective remedies to such individuals, which they have not cared to avail”.He said the draft electoral rolls had been published as far back as Sept 16, 2013, and final rolls were published on January 31, 2014, and campaigns were carried out by EC to for enrolment and inclusion of deleted names.
The Pune Collector Saurabh Rao had submitted to the court that 2.71 lakh voters’ names had been deleted from electoral rolls from Pune lok Sabha constituency between April and July 2013 and another 14000 names were deleted during the summary revision conducted in October 2013. After deletion of these names, 18.33 lakh voters whose names were on the rolls were allowed to vote.
The court noted that while a total of 6.57 lakh names were deleted, 7.39 lakh names were included in the electoral rolls and that the EC had conducted a special campaign in March for enrolment of voters through which 2.83 lakh names were included in the voters’ list.Rejecting prayers seeking interim reliefs in the form of a re-poll, supplementary or stay on the declaration of the lok Sabha polls in Mumbai and Pune, the two judges observed: “On the issue of interim reliefs however, we are afraid that the Petitioners have made out no case whatsoever to deserve the same, save and except some directions in the context of revision of electoral rolls to be undertaken in the future. Such directions, as shall be clarified, have no nexus with the on-going lok Sabha Election process”
The HC bench kept the matter for final hearing on the point of maintainability and asked the parties to file replies if they wanted to do so, within eight weeks.