THE SUPREME COURT TODAY expressed concern over the lack of clarity surrounding the inclusion of 21 lakh new names in the final electoral rolls emerging from the three-month exercise of the Election Commission of India’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of Bihar’s electoral rolls, questioning whether these newly added voters were genuinely new or drawn from the list of 65 lakh voters those were deleted earlier in the draft electoral rolls.
Observing that there is an “appreciation of numbers in the final electoral rolls, a bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi said that there was “confusion” whether the 21 lakh newly added voters were from among 65 lakh voters whose names had been deleted earlier in the draft rolls or entirely fresh entrants to the rolls. The bench said that some of them would be new voters.
Responding to the observation from the bench, Senior Advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, appearing for the Election Commission, told the Bench that “most of the add-ons voters are new”.
Appearing for the NGO Association for Democratic Reforms (‘ADR’), advocate Prashant Bhushan alleged that the most of the excluded voters were Muslims and women. “Instead of cleaning up the rolls, the process has compounded the problem,” he said, urging the Court to direct publication of the lists showing the 3.66 lakh voters deleted after the draft roll and the 21-lakh added in the final version.
Bhushan maintained that the reasons for exclusion had not been communicated to affected individuals. “The Election Commission has not given reasons for deletions, nor has it published the list of 3.66 lakh additional deletions after the draft rolls,” he submitted.
