Election a democratic process, can't be interfered with: SC

The Supreme Court today rejected a plea alleging duplication in the voters' list for the upcoming Bhiwandi municipal polls in Maharashtra, saying election is a democratic process which cannot be interfered with.
The apex court made the observation while hearing a plea challenging the Bombay High Court order dismissing a petition which alleged that there was duplication of 50,922 names in the voters' list prepared for the Bhiwandi civic polls, which is scheduled on May 24.
"The election process cannot be interfered with, otherwise it could create a havoc in the election. In almost every voters' list, you may find this. If the court will stay election on these reasons, there will be no elections in India. It is a democratic process. We are not going to hear it," a vacation bench of Justices Arun Mishra and Navin Sinha said.

The plea before the apex court had alleged that out of the total 4,79,369 voters, 50,922 names have been repeated in the same ward or different wards.
Besides this, there were thousands of voters whose addresses were not mentioned in the list and it was not possible to identify whether these voters were from the same ward or different wards, it said.
The petitioner, a voter in the civic election there, said he had approached the state election commission on the issue and the poll panel had accepted that there were defects in the voters' list.

It said that municipal commissioner had also suspended some employees of the civic body for making serious mistakes while preparing the voters' list without following the instructions of the state election commission.

The plea said the dates for election was declared by the poll panel when the petitioner had moved the high court.
The plea had said that since the whole process of preparation of voters' list was defective, illegal and distorted, the whole electoral process could not be free and fair.