The Supreme Court on Monday refused to entertain a PIL seeking a court-monitored SIT probe into allegations of voter roll manipulation levelled by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi against the NDA dispensation and the Election Commission.
A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi asked the counsel appearing for petitioner Rohit Pandey to take up the plea with the EC. The petitioner submitted that he had filed a complaint with the poll panel but got no response.
However, the bench did not entertain the petition. “The petitioner... may pursue the representation made before the Election Commission. With the aforesaid liberty, the writ petition is dismissed. Pending application(s), if any, shall stand closed,” the order said.
The plea referred to the news conference held by Rahul in which he made explosive claims of a “huge criminal fraud” in polls through collusion between the BJP and
the EC.
Pandey, a Supreme Court advocate, alleged that approximately 10,652 voters in the Mahadevpura Assembly constituency under the Bangalore Central parliamentary seat had identical house numbers or fathers’ names.
The plea also claimed that in Maharashtra, after the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and before the Assembly polls, about 39 lakh new voters were added to the voter rolls within four months compared with the addition of only around 50 lakh voters in the preceding five years.
“Such a sudden and disproportionate increase raises a serious question on the transparency of the EC in the process of addition of names to the voter list,” the plea said.
“Prima facie, it has also been found that in Chandrapur-71 constituency, Booth No. 350, approximately 80 voters are registered at the same house, where it has been discovered that no one is presently residing. This raises serious concerns regarding the transparency of the election procedure…,” Pandey added.
The petition said the apex court’s intervention was necessary to “safeguard the sanctity of electoral rolls across the nation”.
According to the petition, such “manipulation of the voter list” strikes at the root of the under Articles 326 (universal adult suffrage) and 324 (superintendence of free and fair elections) and violates Articles 14 and 21, which safeguard equality before law and the right to meaningfully participate in democratic governance.