EC terms SIR fair, urges SC to reject challenge

The Election Commission on Thursday termed the decision to undertake Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls “fair, just and reasonable”, and urged the Supreme Court to reject pleas challenging the exercise in Bihar.

It argued that a roving and fishing enquiry into the special scrutiny cannot be done at the behest of a few NGOs and politicians.

“None of the 66 lakh persons, whose names were deleted in Bihar SIR, came to this court or high court or filed pleas with the Election Commission. A roving and fishing enquiry cannot be permitted at the instance of ADR (Association for Democratic Reforms) and the PUCL (People’s Union for Civil Liberty) and a few parliamentarians,” said senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi on behalf of the poll panel.

The submissions were made by the senior lawyer during the final hearing on a batch of petitions challenging the Election Commission’s decision to undertake SIR in different States, including Bihar.

Referring to a judgment in which the Supreme Court had refused a plea seeking re-introduction of paper ballot and discarding the EVMs, he said, “In short, we must follow Europe. If they go for EVMs, then we must go for it. And if they go for a paper ballot, then we go for it.” He said one person writes an article in a newspaper, and the other files a petition in the Supreme Court referring to that. Dwivedi urged the bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi to dismiss the pleas with cost while defending the SIR as a lawful and transparent exercise of statutory powers under the Representation of the People Act, 1950.

He argued that once the Election Commission invokes its powers under Section 21(3) of the 1950 Act, the manner and procedure of conducting a special revision are left entirely to its discretion. Dwivedi argued that Section 21(3) operates independently of Section 21(2), which governs routine and periodical revisions. “There is no compulsion under Section 21(3) that every SIR must be identical in nature,” he said.

He said the SIR exercise had not been undertaken for nearly 20 years in Bihar and was conducted in response to changing demographic realities, including urbanisation and population movement.

According to Dwivedi, merely adopting a different methodology or deviating from the manual governing routine revisions could not, by itself, render the exercise suspect or ultra vires. The CJI, however, observed that if the poll panel’s argument that Section 21(3) grants unfettered discretion were accepted, “the case would end there”.

Dwivedi placed significant reliance on the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2003, which, he said, was enacted after the last SIR and introduced stricter requirements for establishing citizenship, including proof relating to parents’ citizenship.

He pointed out that the amendment was passed during the tenure of then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee with bipartisan support, demonstrating legislative consensus on the need to examine citizenship due to increasing cross-border migration.