The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear on July 10 a batch of petitions challenging the decision of the Election Commission (EC) to undertake special intensive revision of electoral rolls in poll-bound Bihar.
Several fresh pleas including a joint petition by opposition parties leaders of Congress, NCP (Sharad Pawar), Shiv Sena (UBT), Samajwadi Party, JMM, CPI and CPI (ML) were filed in the apex court against the poll panel’s decision to conduct the special intensive revision (SIR) before Bihar went to polls.
A bench comprising Justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and Joymalya Bagchi considered the submissions of lawyers led by senior counsel Kapil Sibal, who was representing several petitioners, and agreed to hear the pleas on July 10.
Sibal, who is representing RJD MP Manoj Jha, urged the bench to issue notices to the poll panel on the petitions, calling it an “impossible task” within the timeline as elections were to happen in the state in November.
Senior advocate Abhishek M Singhvi, appearing for another petitioner, said of the eight crore voters in the state, four crore voters would 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, said the poll panel was not accepting Aadhaar cards and voter ID cards as proofs for the exercise.
Posting the matter on July 10, Justice Dhulia said the timeline, at present, did not have sanctity as elections hadn’t been notified yet.
The bench asked the petitioners to give advance notice of their petitions to the counsel for Election Commission of India.
Beside RJD MP Jha and Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra, Congress’ K C Venugopal, Supriya Sule from the Sharad Pawar NCP faction, D Raja from Communist Party of India, Harinder Singh Malik from Samajwadi Party, Arvind Sawant from Shiv Sena (Uddhav Thackeray), Sarfraz Ahmed from Jharkhand Mukti Morcha and Dipankar Bhattacharya of CPI (ML) have jointly moved the top court.
All leaders have challenged the Election Commission’s order directing for SIR of electoral rolls in Bihar and sought direction for its quashing.
Jha, in his plea filed through advocate Fauzia Shakil, argues 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.
He said the order was a tool of “institutionalised disenfranchisement” 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 directions to the poll body to hold the upcoming Bihar Assembly elections on the basis of the existing electoral rolls.
Jha contended SIR was ordered by the election panel without consultation with the political parties or stakeholders.
“While the ECI has decided to commence the SIR in the entire country, the process has been initiated first in the state of Bihar, owing to the upcoming elections in the latter part of the year.
“The impugned order prescribes a schedule and requires the submission of enumeration form within 30 days, followed by filing of claims and objections and their disposal within 30 days,” the plea said.
The order was stated to be “discriminatory, unreasonable and manifestly arbitrary and violates Article 14, 21 325, 326”.
Jha said the present SIR process was not only “hasty and ill-timed”, but also disenfranchised crores of voters, robbing them of their constitutional right to vote.
He continued, “Moreover, this exercise has been launched during the monsoon season in Bihar, when many districts in Bihar are affected by floods and local population is displaced, thereby making it extremely difficult and almost impossible for a large section of population to meaningfully participate in the process.”
One of the most affected classes, he said, are the migrant workers, many of whom despite remaining listed in the 2003 voter rolls, are unlikely to be able to return to Bihar within the stipulated time frame of 30 days to submit their enumeration forms leading to automatic deletion of their names from the electoral rolls.
Jha questioned the short deadlines, saying it make the whole process unreasonable and unworkable.
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.
Several other civil society organisations like PUCL, NGO Association of Democratic Reforms and activists like Yogendra Yadav have moved the top court against the EC order. (PTI)
