The Supreme Court has directed the Election Commission of India (ECI) to allow online submission of claims by voters who were deleted from the draft electoral rolls for the Bihar Special Intensive Revision (SIR). The court specified that voters can use their Aadhaar card or any of the 11 other acceptable documents to make their claims, emphasizing that the entire process should be “voter friendly.”
The ECI had previously published a list of 65 lakh people who were removed from the electoral rolls as part of the SIR exercise, which has drawn criticism from opposition parties. They have expressed concern that the names of genuine voters were being deleted without proper verification and argued that the list of 11 acceptable documents, which did not initially include the commonly-held Aadhaar card, made the process unfair.
Political Parties Implicated in Voter Revision Row
The Supreme Court also expressed its surprise at the “inaction” of political parties in assisting with the correction of names. The court noted the ECI’s submission that while 85,000 new voters have come forward in the Bihar SIR, only two objections have been filed by the booth-level agents (BLAs) of political parties.
To address this, the court has now directed the ECI to issue specific instructions to BLAs to assist voters in submitting the required forms with either an Aadhaar card or any of the other 11 documents. The court also ordered that all relevant political parties be impleaded as respondents in the case to ensure their involvement.
The issue stems from the ECI’s ongoing Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in the poll-bound state of Bihar. The Supreme Court had previously directed the ECI to publish the list of deleted ‘ASD’ (Absentee, Shifted, and Dead) voters by August 19 and file a compliance report by August 22. According to the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), Bihar, the ASD lists have been displayed at various polling booths across the state and online. Sources