Institute of Legal and Management Studies

The Supreme Court on Wednesday (August 6) asked the Election Commission of India to respond by Saturday on the allegations of irregularities regarding the deletion of 65 lakh voters from the draft electoral roll list published with respect to Bihar after the Special Intensive Revision (SIR).

The Court asked the ECI to specify if the draft list, published on August 1, was shared with the political parties before publication.

The Court told the Election Commission of India to respond to the allegations made in an application filed by the Association for Democratic Reforms, which alleged that the ECI has not disclosed who the omitted 65 lakh voters are. The NGO also contended that the ECI has not specified whether the omitted voters are dead or have migrated. Advocate Prashant Bhushan, for ADR, contended that political parties were not shared with the lists at the block level and that there was no clarity whether the inclusions/omissions were with the recommendations of the Booth Level Officers.

Mentioning the matter before a bench comprising Justice Surya Kant, Justice Ujjal Bhuyan and Justice NK Singh, Bhushan said : "We have filed an IA…the draft roll they have published says 65 lakh voters' names have been omitted…they have not given list of those names…they have said people are dead, have migrated…they should disclose who are the 65 lakhs, who are dead, who have migrated…secondly, the BLOs when forwarding the forms have said this person is/is not recommended by BLO…they have not published for rest of the people that means out of 8 crores minus 65 lakhs, whether BLOs have recommended or not recommended…this information will be very important. IA may be listed tomorrow or day after."

Justice Surya Kant then pointed out that as per the SOP, every representative of the political party must be provided with the list at the block level. Bhushan claimed that this has not been done. "They have not conveyed. In case they have given to some political party, reasons are not given," he said.

Jusice Kant however said that it was only a preliminary list and that reasons will be given later at the time of the final list.

Bhushan claimed that persons have been included in the list without the recommendations of the Booth Level Officers.

"Even those who have been included, BLOs have not recommended. Vast majority, more than 75%, have not submitted these 11 documents. BLOs have themselves filled up the forms and there are no documents in any of them. Among those, they are now saying BLOs have not recommended. About 12% in 2 constituencies have not been recommended," he said.

The Counsel for the ECI refuted Bhushan's submissions, saying that incorrect submissions were being made. He stated that the draft list was shared with the poltiical parties before the publication.

"We are only obligated to make draft roll publicly available...we can show that we have shared the list with the political party representatives.." the ECI counsel said.

"Why can't you say all this in a reply? If you have supplied, please give a list of political parties to whom you have supplied, so that Mr Bhushan's client can collect information from those authorized representatives. File your reply by Saturday," Justice Kant said.

"We will ensure that atleast every voter who is likely to be affected...we will ensure that requisite information, whatever documents are required from him, those are duly considered. File a comprehensive reply. Not only political parties, there must be information with local administration also," Justice Kant added.

The Court is scheduled to hear the petitions challenging the Bihar SIR exercise on August 12.