‘Democracy prevails': Opposition on SC direction to publish list of deleted voters in Bihar rolls

Scroll.in

3 days ago

The Supreme Court directing the Election Commission to publish a district-wise list of around 65 lakh voters whose names were deleted from Bihar's draft electoral rolls was a 'huge message for the vote chors [thieves]', said Opposition parties on Thursday.
Earlier in the day, the court directed the list, prepared after the special intensive revision exercise, should be displayed on the websites of the state's district electoral officers and chief electoral officer.
It added that the poll panel must also state the reason for each deletion, such as death, migration or double registration.
The bench passed the directions in response to petitions challenging the voter roll revision in Bihar ahead of the Assembly elections, expected in October or November.
The draft roll published on August 1 showed that 65.6 lakh names were removed from the list. Of these, 22 lakh were due to deaths, 36 lakh were of people who had permanently shifted or were untraceable and seven lakh were duplicate entries, the Election Commission had said then.
Following the court's directions, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said that the 'campaign of millions of aware citizens, the Congress Party and Rahul Gandhi has achieved its first success' through the intervention of the court.
The Congress was among the petitioners challenging the special intensive revision exercise.
'The argument of the ECI that Aadhaar is not valid for voting has now been recognised by the Honorable Supreme Court for those 65 lakh people in the SIR [special intensive revision] case,' he said. 'We welcome the decision of the Honorable Supreme Court given in the public interest.'
The Congress chief added: 'We will not let the people's 'right to vote' be taken away!!'
In its order, the court had also directed the Election Commission to specify in public notices that the excluded persons, at the time of submitting their claims for inclusion in the final list, can also furnish their Aadhaar cards.
'Your list of 11 documents seems citizen-friendly, but Aadhaar and EPIC [Electoral Photo Identity Card] are readily available,' the court said. 'Your notice can say that those who have not submitted [their claims] so far, they can submit their Aadhaar and EPIC also.'
These two documents were not among the poll body's 11 accepted proofs of identity. Several petitioners had objected to the exclusion of Aadhaar, the most widely held ID, from the list of permissible documents, calling it ' absurd '.
Congress MP KC Venugopal said that the court's directions were 'heartening', The Indian Express reported. He added that it was 'a huge message for the vote chors' who were trying to use the exercise 'to distort the electoral process' in the poll-bound state.
Aadhaar was the most widely held document by the poor and marginalised, Venugopal said, adding that the direction would bring in 'much-needed transparency to the SIR process'.
The Aam Aadmi Party said that the court's direction on the exercise was a 'sharp slap on the face of BJP's [Bharatiya Janata Party's] Election Commission'.
Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary MA Baby called the directions a 'partial relief'.
'However, the debate over SIR extends beyond mere revision, raising concerns about systemic sabotage in the voters' list that could undermine democracy,' he said on social media.
Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav said that the court had ' given its approval ' to the demands that the Opposition had raised about the special intensive revision exercise, The Times of India reported.
Speaking to reporters, he added that the Opposition had left no stone unturned. 'Following today's Supreme Court debate and the subsequent interim decision, it is clear that democracy has prevailed,' the newspaper quoted Yadav as saying.
He added: 'We were not opposing SIR from the beginning, but rather the process and the information that the Election Commission was trying to hide, which was the basis of our Opposition.'
During the hearing on Thursday, the court had said that the poll panel should issue a 'layman-friendly' notice informing the public where they can find the list of deleted voters and name the website.
'If Poonam Devi has been omitted, Poonam Devi must be able to know that she has been deleted and why she has been deleted,' the bench said, adding that the documents should be searchable based on Elector Photo Identity Card numbers.
Scroll had reported on Saturday that the Election Commission had replaced the digital draft voter lists in Bihar with scanned images of the voter lists on its official websites.
The digital draft lists are machine-readable and easier to analyse for errors and patterns on a large scale. The scanned versions make this process harder.
Bihar voter roll revision
The revision of the electoral rolls in Bihar was announced by the Election Commission on June 24.
As part of the exercise, persons whose names were not on the 2003 voter list needed to submit proof of eligibility to vote.
Voters born before July 1, 1987, were required to show proof of their date and place of birth, while those born between July 1, 1987, and December 2, 2004, had to also submit documents establishing the date and place of birth of one of their parents.
Those born after December 2, 2004, needed proof of date of birth for themselves and both parents.
The draft voter list, published on August 1, comprises electors who submitted their enumeration forms to the poll panel between June 24 and July 26.
They will now have to produce proof of citizenship to make it to the final list that will be published on September 30.