Petition in SC seeks electoral roll revision before every election

On Monday, the top court agreed to hear on July 10 a batch of petitions challenging the decision of ECI to undertake special intensive revision of electoral rolls in poll-bound Bihar

A plea in the Supreme Court has sought Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, particularly before parliamentary, state assembly and local body elections in the country.

On Monday, the top court agreed to hear on July 10 a batch of petitions challenging the decision of the Election Commission of India (ECI) to undertake special intensive revision of electoral rolls in poll-bound Bihar.

A bench of Justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and Joymalya Bagchi on Tuesday asked the petitioner Ashwini Upadhyay, who sought the matter's urgent listing along with the pending petitions opposing the election commission move, to iron out procedural defects before it could be listed for hearing.

Upadhyay sought his plea to be heard on July 10, when the other pleas would be heard.

His plea sought a direction to the Election Commission of India to conduct the SIR in order to ensure only Indian citizens decided the polity and policy "not the illegal foreign infiltrators".

"Demography of 200 districts and 1,500 tehsils have changed after the independence due to massive illegal infiltration, deceitful religious conversion and population explosion. Demography is destiny, and dozens of districts have already seen their destiny being shaped by those who aren't Indians," his plea said. 

Through elections a nation shapes its politics and policy, and therefore, it is the constitutional duty of the Centre, state and ECI to ensure that only genuine citizens cast their vote in parliamentary, state assembly and local body elections, not the foreigners, it added.

"For this, Special Intensive Scrutiny of Electoral Rolls, from time to time, is necessary," the plea said.

SIR of electoral rolls was necessary owing to the constitutional mandate for free and fair elections and was an extraordinary exercise under Section 21(3) to address serious irregularities when the normal cycle is insufficient, the petitioner argued.

In Bihar, with 243 assembly constituencies and an estimated 8,00010,000 illegal, duplicate and ghost entries in voter lists are there in every constituency and even marginal discrepancies of 2,0003,000 votes can tilt election outcomes, it added.

Several fresh pleas including a joint petition by opposition parties leaders of Congress, NCP (Sharad Pawar), Shiv Sena (UBT), Samajwadi Party, JMM, CPI and CPI (ML) were filed in the apex court against the poll panel's decision to conduct the SIR before Bihar went to polls.

Beside separate pleas of RJD MP Manoj Jha and Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra, Congress' K C Venugopal, Supriya Sule from the Sharad Pawar NCP faction, D Raja from Communist Party of India, Harinder Singh Malik from Samajwadi Party, Arvind Sawant from Shiv Sena (Uddhav Thackeray), Sarfraz Ahmed from Jharkhand Mukti Morcha and Dipankar Bhattacharya of CPI (ML) have jointly moved the top court.

All leaders have challenged the Election Commission's order directing for SIR of electoral rolls in Bihar and sought direction for its quashing.