The Election Commission (EC) will have to provide before the Supreme Court details of the 3.66 lakh voters excluded from the final voters list after the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise in Bihar which will go to poll on November 6 and 11.
The apex court will take up the matter again on Thursday.
“The SIR has compounded the problems instead of cleaning them up… total lack of transparency. The information about 65 lakh deleted voters was only given after the court passed direction. They did not upload the information according to the guidelines,” advocate Prashant Bhushan argued before the bench comprising Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi.
The apex court said any person whose name is deleted from the final rolls could seek the court’s intervention.
Lawyers for the petitioners say they need more data before taking the next legal step.
Names of 68.66 lakh voters were deleted from the electorate of 7.89 crore on June 25, the day the EC announced SIR for Bihar. In the final rolls released after the exercise names of 21.53 lakh electors were added, taking the total number of voters to 7.43 crore.
Counsel Rakesh Dwivedi appearing on behalf of the central poll panel informed the bench that most of the additions are new voters.
Dwivedi was responding to a query made by Justice Bagchi during Tuesday’s hearing.
“There was a 65 lakh deletion… We said if you have deleted someone please put up their data in your district electoral offices. Now from the draft you have got the final list. Final list appears to be an appreciation of numbers,” observed Justice Bagchi. “It has gone up from 65 lakh. Now there is a confusion. What is the identity of this add on? Is it an add-on of the deleted names or add-on of independent new names? We need clarity. This exercise is in aid of the electoral process.”
In June this year, the EC had launched the SIR in Bihar for “exclusion of the names of foreign illegal immigrants” in the existing electoral roll.
The final list revealed by the central poll panel did not mention any “foreign illegal immigrants.” After the SIR exercise the EC released the roll with the names of 3.66 lakh “ineligible voters” deleted from the list.
Making his argument, the counsel for the central poll panel, Dwivedi said none of the parties (who had filed the petition) had amended their petitions.
“They (petitioners like Association for Democratic Reforms) are not concerned with the elections… They want data? Data for what? They want us to give data at the time of election. They have not challenged anything,” Dwivedi told the apex court.
When Justice Kant asked the counsel for the petitioners why no affidavit was filed, Bhushan raised a question.
“How many persons will come like this? Their rules say that objections and deletion have to go on the website. They have violated their own rules, guidelines, manuals,” said Bhushan.
Bhushan added: “There are both additions and deletions. We have to match it with the original list. First 66 lakh were deleted. And how many new people who were not there in the original list have been added. It is very difficult for us but EC can do this with the press of a button. But they are not doing it. All these people cannot come to the Supreme Court.”
The counsel for the EC repeatedly told the court for the petitioners to file another affidavit.
“We will file the affidavit. This may not be made into a fait accompli. We have showed how grievously they have deviated from their own rules,” Bhushan said.
The case will be heard again on Thursday afternoon, little over a month before the results of the Bihar polls are declared.