The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear on July 10 a batch of petitions challenging the decision of the Election Commission to undertake special intensive revision of electoral rolls in poll-bound Bihar.
The Bench comprising Justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and Joymalya Bagchi took note of the submissions of a battery of senior lawyers led by Kapil Sibal on behalf of several petitioners and agreed to hear the pleas on Thursday. As many as 10 Opposition parties including Congress approached the apex court.
Sibal, who appeared for RJD MP Manoj Jha, urged the bench to issue notices to the Election Commission on the petitions, saying it is an impossible task to be done within the timeline as elections are to be held in November.
Senior advocate Abhishek Singhvi, appearing for Congress submitted that there are around eight crore voters in the State of which around four crore voters will have to submit their documents under the exercise. “The timeline is so strict, and if by July 25 you don’t submit the documents, you will be out,” Singhvi added.
Senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, appearing for another petitioner, submitted that poll panel authorities are not accepting Aadhaar card and voter cards as documents for the exercise. Justice Dhulia said the matter will be listed on Thursday and added that the timeline at present does not have sanctity as elections have not been notified as yet. The bench asked the petitioners to give advance notice of their petitions to the counsel for Election Commission of India.
Several pleas, including by leaders like Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) MP Manoj Jha and Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra, have been filed in the top court challenging the Election Commission’s order directing for special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar.
Jha, in his plea said the EC’s June 24 order be quashed for being violative of Articles 14 (fundamental right to equality), 21 (fundamental right to life and liberty), 325 (no person can be excluded from electoral roll based on caste, religion and sex) and 326 (every citizen of India who has attained 18 years of age is eligible to be registered as a voter) of the Constitution.
The Rajya Sabha MP submitted that the impugned order is a tool of institutionalised disenfranchisement and “it is being used to justify aggressive and opaque revisions of electoral rolls that disproportionately target Muslim, Dalit and poor migrant communities, as such, they are not random patterns but it is engineered exclusions.” He also sought direction to the poll body to hold the upcoming Bihar Assembly elections on the basis of the existing electoral rolls.
Congress general secretary K C Venugopal said as a signatory on behalf of the Indian National Congress, along with various opposition parties, he has approached the Supreme Court against the “blatantly unconstitutional SIR exercise” in Bihar. “It has wreaked havoc across villages and towns of Bihar, giving crores of voters anxiety about whether their right to vote will be stolen. This is mass-scale rigging and mischief being carried out by the ECI, under instructions from the ruling regime,” Venugopal alleged in a post on X. “We have faith that the Hon’ble Supreme Court will deliver justice,” he said.
TMC leader and MP Mahua Moitra also moved the top court challenging the poll panel’s order on SIR of electoral rolls in Bihar. Moitra sought a direction from the apex court to restrain the EC from issuing similar orders for SIR of electoral rolls in other States of the country. A similar plea has also been filed by NGO Association of Democratic Reforms, challenging the poll body’s direction for SIR of electoral rolls in Bihar. Several other civil society organisations like PUCL and activists like Yogendra Yadav have approached the top court against the EC’s order.
The EC on June 24 issued instructions to carry out an SIR in Bihar, apparently to weed out ineligible names and ensure only eligible citizens are included in the electoral roll. The last such revision in Bihar was conducted in 2003. According to the EC, the exercise was necessitated by rapid urbanisation, frequent migration, young citizens becoming eligible to vote, non-reporting of deaths, and inclusion of the names of foreign illegal immigrants.