Institute of Legal and Management Studies

The All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) has filed an application in the Supreme Court supporting the Election Commission of India's (ECI) decision to conduct a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Tamil Nadu, calling it a legitimate and necessary exercise to uphold the sanctity of elections and prevent voter fraud.

The AIADMK is the first political party to move the Supreme Court in support of the SIR, which is under challenge by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), the ruling party in Tamil Nadu. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the DMK's petition against the SIR tomorrow.

In its application, the AIADMK submitted that Tamil Nadu has 234 Assembly constituencies, each of which reportedly contains thousands of duplicate or ineligible entries in the voter lists. In such circumstances, the SIR ordered by the ECI, it said, is “a legitimate and necessary exercise to uphold the sanctity of elections, prevent voter fraud, and ensure that the rule of law is upheld in the electoral process.”

The party contended that as one of the two major political parties in the State, it would be directly prejudiced if the revision is not conducted properly in its “true letter and spirit,” since the continuance of inaccurate, inflated, or manipulated electoral rolls “disproportionately affects electoral outcomes and undermines the level playing field essential to democratic elections.”

The application further argued that the failure to conduct the SIR would “distort the representative mandate of the electorate” by permitting elections to be held on defective rolls, where “thousands of ineligible or duplicate entries continue to exist.” It added that such defects also result in the exclusion of genuine voters, compromising the applicant's right to contest, campaign, and seek a fair verdict from the electorate, thereby violating the constitutional principle of electoral equality.

A bench comprising Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi has been hearing the petitions related to the Bihar SIR over the past few months. Meanwhile, the ECI's decision to extend the SIR to more states has come under challenge from the DMK, the CPI(M) as well as the West Bengal Congress Committee.

The matter will come up before the Supreme Court tomorrow.