SIR: Supreme Court said- Aadhaar and Voter ID are not proof of citizenship; EC said- will correct the error in the draft list
Hearing is going on in the Supreme Court regarding the special revision (SIR) of the voter list in Bihar. Opposition parties and social organizations allege that under this process, the names of crores of voters are being deleted, while the Election Commission claims that this process is to keep the voter list transparent and correct.
Supreme Court’s comment – lack of trust, facts clear
During the hearing on Tuesday, the Supreme Court bench of Justice Suryakant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi said that this matter is mostly about lack of trust. The Election Commission told the court that out of 7.9 crore voters, about 6.5 crore people did not need to provide any documents, because they or their parents were already registered in the 2003 voter list. The court told the petitioners – If 7.24 crore out of 7.9 crore voters have responded to the SIR, then the argument of ‘names of 1 crore voters missing’ does not hold.
What is the controversy over the documents?
The Supreme Court agreed with the decision of the Election Commission that Aadhaar and voter ID card alone cannot be considered as a strong proof of citizenship. There should be other documents along with it. Kapil Sibal (on behalf of the petitioner) said that even though people have Aadhaar, ration and EPIC cards, the officials are not considering them valid. The court asked- ‘Do you mean that those who do not have any documents should also be considered voters?’
Objections of political parties and activists
Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Prashant Bhushan raised questions on the time limit of this process and the data of declaring 65 lakh voters as ‘dead, migrated or registered elsewhere’. Yogendra Yadav said- The adult population in Bihar is 8.18 crore, while the number of voters was stated to be 7.9 crore. He alleged that the design of SIR is to ‘remove names’. Examples were given that in some areas living people were declared dead and dead people were declared alive.
Errors in the draft list will be corrected- Election Commission
Senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi (on behalf of ECI) said- This is a draft list, some errors in it are natural, which will be corrected in the final list. Its purpose is to increase the purity of elections by removing ineligible names from the voter list. Let us tell you that the draft roll will be published on August 1 and the final roll will be released on September 30. The Supreme Court had already said that if a situation of deletion of names on a large scale arises, then it will immediately intervene. The hearing will continue on Wednesday, in which the court has asked the ECI to keep the complete data ready.
Which MPs reached the apex court?
Many big political leaders and organizations have reached the Supreme Court in this matter. This includes RJD MP Manoj Jha, TMC MP Mahua Moitra, Congress MP KC Venugopal, NCP (Sharad Pawar faction) MP Supriya Sule, CPI General Secretary D. Raja, Samajwadi Party MP Harinder Singh Malik, Shiv Sena (Uddhav Thackeray faction) MP Arvind Sawant, JMM MP Sarfaraz Ahmed, CPIML General Secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya as well as activists like PUCL, ADR and Yogendra Yadav.
