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Election Commission Of India
The Supreme Court on Wednesday held that the Election Commission is empowered to conduct a limited scrutiny of citizenship status while preparing and revising electoral rolls. The top court, however, clarified that such scrutiny cannot amount to a final adjudication of citizenship, which remains the exclusive domain of central government authorities under the Citizenship Act. The observations on the effect of citizenship were made by a bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant in the significant verdict upholding the Election Commission's (EC's) power to conduct a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter rolls. The bench held that the EC has the authority to examine citizenship status only for the limited purpose of determining eligibility for the electoral rolls. "In view of the statutory requirement under Section 16 of the RP (Representation of the People) Act, the Commission, in the course of preparing or revising electoral rolls, is undoubtedly empowered to examine ...
The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the power of the Election Commission of India to conduct a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise of electoral rolls, saying that it "advances the constitutional imperative of free and fair elections". It can't be said that the poll panel acted outside statutory powers by exercising SIR, observed a bench headed by Chief Justice Surya Kant. "We are unable to conclude that the impugned exercise is a process resorted to solely for administrative convenience. On the contrary, we hold that the electoral SIR advances the constitutional imperative of free and fair elections," the bench said. The pleas challenging SIR claimed that the Election Commission does not have powers under Article 326 of the Constitution, the Representation of the People Act, 1950 and the Rules made under it to carry out SIR in a larger form. On January 29, the top court reserved its verdict on the pleas, including one filed by the NGO Association for Democratic Reforms ...
The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voters list will begin in Delhi with door-to-door visits by booth-level officers from June 30 in a transparent manner, Delhi Chief Electoral Officer Ashok Kumar said on Wednesday. Addressing a press conference, Kumar said that from June 20 to June 29, training of booth-level officers (BLOs) and printing of enumeration forms and other papers will be underway as the in-house activity for the SIR. There are checks and balances at every step of the verification process, and political parties will be involved through booth-level agents (BLAs). All the information will be shared through the website of the CEO's office, he said. Awareness activities will be carried out, and special camps will be set up to help voters submit their enumeration forms, Kumar said. The voters will be provided two copies of the enumeration forms, one of which will be filled out and returned to the BLOs. The voters will also have the facility to submit completed enumeratio
The Election Commission on Friday announced polls for 24 Rajya Sabha seats on June 18. In a statement, the EC said the elections for the Rajya Sabha seats will be held in 10 states where the incumbents are retiring on different dates beginning June 21 to July 19. The Rajya Sabha elections will be held in four seats each in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Karnataka, three seats each in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, two seats in Jharkhand and one seat each in Manipur, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram. The last date for filing nominations is June 8.
Voting began on Thursday morning for the re-election to the Falta assembly seat in West Bengal's South 24 Parganas district, amid tight security, officials said. More than 2.36 lakh people, including 1.15 lakh women and nine belonging to the third gender, are eligible to cast their votes across 285 booths in this re-election, which commenced at 7 am, they said. The repoll was ordered due to "severe electoral offences and subversion of the democratic process" on April 29, when voting in Falta was held in the second phase of the assembly elections, the officials said. A total of six candidates are in the fray, including TMC's Jahangir Khan, who announced he was withdrawing from the race on Tuesday. Even as Khan announced pulling out from the contest, his name remained on the EVMs as he couldn't officially withdraw his candidature. Among other candidates are Debangshu Panda of the BJP, CPI(M)'s Sambhu Nath Kurmi, and Congress' Abdur Razzak Molla. A total of 35 companies of the Centra
The Election Commission has ordered a probe into the allegations of foreign nationals "deceitfully" voting in the April 23 Tamil Nadu Assembly election, an official said on Saturday. The EC's action follows a report submitted by the police recently after they arrested ten foreign nationals who attempted to board a flight. The airport officials became suspicious when they noticed indelible ink on their index fingers and alerted the police. The Chennai police said ten foreign nationals were arrested in nine cases for allegedly casting votes in the Tamil Nadu 2026 Assembly polls. They were detained at the Chennai and Madurai airports. Police enquiry revealed that these nationals were from Sri Lanka, the UK and Canada. "They had used fraudulent Indian ID documents to cast the votes. The indelible ink was noticed on their fingers when they attempted to fly out," the police official said. The police Central Crime Branch registered cases and is probing, the official said and added that as
The EC will conduct a month-long Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Odisha from May 30, an official said on Friday. The exercise will continue till June 28, while the final electoral rolls after the revision will be published on September 6, Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of Odisha R S Gopalan said. He said training of booth-level officers (BLOs) and booth-level agents (BLAs) will be conducted between May 20 and 29, following which BLOs will undertake door-to-door verification from May 30 to June 28. He informed that rationalisation of the polling stations will also be completed by June 28. The draft electoral rolls will be published on July 5, and claims and objections can be filed till August 4. After disposal of the objections, the final electoral rolls will be published on September 6, he said. Currently, Odisha has 38,123 polling booths, and the number will increase to 45,255 after completion of the exercise, the CEO said. As part of the revision process,
The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of Delhi's electoral rolls will begin from June 30, officials said Thursday, adding preparations for the exercise covering over 1.5 crore voters have been completed. The Election Commission earlier in the day announced the rollout of SIR in 16 states and three Union territories, including Delhi, in a phased manner beginning May 30. "We have already finished preparations for SIR in Delhi, including training. Further, refresher training will be imparted to the personnel, including the booth level officials (BLOs) for the exercise beginning June 20," said an official of the Delhi Chief Electoral Officer's (CEO) office. The final electoral roll of Delhi, following the completion of SIR, will be published on October 7. Over 13,000 BLOs will take part in the door-to-door verification exercise under SIR, he added. An awareness campaign will be launched from Monday to educate voters about verifying and matching their names with the 2002 voter list. The
The Supreme Court on Thursday said free and fair elections are a part of the basic structure of the Constitution, and this cannot be ensured unless the Election Commission is independent and also appears to be independent. A bench comprising Justices Dipankar Datta and Satish Chandra Sharma made the observations during the final hearing on a batch of six petitions challenging the constitutional validity of a new law governing the appointment of the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) and the Election Commissioners (EC). The Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Term of Office) Act, 2023, which came into force on January 2, 2024, mandates that the CEC and the ECs are appointed by the President on the recommendation of a Selection Committee consisting of the Prime Minister, a Union Cabinet Minister, and the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha. The law replaces the Chief Justice of India with a Union Cabinet Minister on the
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday took a swipe at the appointments of erstwhile chief election officer Manoj Agarwal as the new West Bengal chief secretary and Subrata Gupta as the chief advisor to Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari, saying that in the BJP-EC "chor bazaar", the bigger the theft, the bigger the reward. The Congress has claimed that the appointments reflected the "brazen collusion and connivance" between the Election Commission and the BJP. In a post in Hindi on X, Gandhi said, "In the BJP-EC's 'chor bazaar'' the bigger the theft, the bigger the reward." The opposition party had on Monday said that there is not even an attempt to keep the collusion discrete or concealed. Congress general secretary in charge of communications, Jairam Ramesh, had said the BJP-led West Bengal government has appointed the erstwhile chief election officer Agarwal, a 1990-batch IAS officer responsible for overseeing the recent Assembly elections in the state, as the new chief ...
West Bengal's Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Manoj Agarwal was appointed the chief secretary of the Suvendu Adhikari-led BJP government in the state, according to an official order issued on Monday. Agarwal, a 1990-batch IAS officer of the West Bengal cadre, helmed the EC-mandated SIR exercise in the state in the run-up to the assembly polls in which around 91 lakh voters were removed from the electoral rolls. Incumbent Chief Secretary Dushyant Nariala was named Principal Resident Commissioner in New Delhi, the order stated. Nariwala, a 1993-batch IAS, was named the chief secretary of West Bengal by the poll body, removing Nandini Chakravorty from the position of the state's top bureaucrat. The BJP came to power for the first time in the state after handing a stunning defeat to the Trinamool Congress. The saffron party secured 207 seats in the 294-member assembly, reducing the TMC to 80 seats.
Questioning the credibility of the electoral process in the West Bengal assembly polls, senior TMC leader Abhishek Banerjee on Saturday accused the Election Commission of acting in a "partisan" manner and alleged large-scale irregularities during the elections won by the BJP. In his first social media post after the declaration of results, Banerjee said the TMC would continue to be a "strong, vocal and uncompromising opposition" both in West Bengal and at the Centre. "Throughout this entire process, we witnessed what we believe was deeply partisan conduct by several government agencies as well as the Election Commission of India," Banerjee said in a post on X. "Democratic institutions that are meant to function impartially appeared compromised, raising serious concerns about the fairness, credibility and transparency of the electoral process in West Bengal," the Diamond Harbour MP wrote. Stating that the TMC fought an extremely difficult election where "nearly 30 lakh genuine voter
West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Manoj Kumar Agarwal on Wednesday met Governor RN Ravi at Lok Bhavan to complete the statutory formalities of handing over the gazette notification containing the names of elected members of the new Assembly following the recently concluded state polls. Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Agarwal said the Election Commission's role in the Assembly elections is over except for the completion of the pending poll process in Falta constituency. "I had come to complete the statutory work to submit the gazetted notification, which is done after any election. The list of elected MLAs has been handed over," the CEO said. "Now, constituting the Assembly is the work of Lok Bhavan. The EC role has ended except for completing the Falta poll," he added. The handing over of the gazette notification is a mandatory constitutional norm after the declaration of results, paving the way for the Governor to initiate the process for the constitution of the n
West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Agarwal said no rallies celebrating the victory of candidates will be allowed in the state on Monday as the counting of votes for 293 assembly seats was underway. He said the counting is going fine and no violence has been reported in the state. "We have directed all DMs not to allow any victory rallies today. These victory processions will be allowed from tomorrow. We don't want any post-poll violence and appeal to everyone to stay calm and maintain peace," the CEO said. Political parties need to take permission from local police stations to bring out victory rallies, he said. "There has been no incident of violence. Any poll-related death was reported from anywhere in Bengal," Agarwal said. The poll panel was looking into complaints that agents of different parties were unable to reach the counting centres, special observer Subrata Gupta told reporters earlier in the day.