NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday commenced hearing on a batch of pleas challenging the Election Commission’s decision to undertake a special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in the poll-bound Bihar.
A partial working day (PWD) bench comprising Justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and Joymalya Bagchi was told by senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, appearing for the poll panel, that he has preliminary objections to the petitions.
Besides Dwivedi, senior advocates K K Venugopal and Maninder Singh are representing the EC.
Senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, appearing for one of the petitioners, said the revision of electoral rolls can be permitted under the Representation of People Act.
The entire SIR will cover around 7.9 crore citizens, he said, adding that even the voter ID and Aadhaar cards are not being considered.
During the hearing, the EC told the Supreme Court that it has some preliminary objections to the pleas challenging the SIR of electoral rolls in poll-bound Bihar.
The top court noted what EC is doing is mandated under the Constitution, and the last such exercise was undertaken in 2003.
Meanwhile, the court questioned the poll body over the exclusion of the Aadhaar card from the list of documents accepted in the special revision of electoral rolls in Bihar.
The SC also asked the EC why it was getting into the citizenship issue, emphasising that it is the domain of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).
The EC responded by stating that citizenship is required to be checked for being a voter in India under Article 326 of the Constitution.
However, the SC observed that if the EC was to check citizenship under the SIR of electoral rolls in Bihar, it should have acted earlier, adding that it was “a bit late.”
The hearing is underway.
Over 10 petitions have been filed in the SC, including one by NGO ‘Association for Democratic Reforms’, the lead petitioner.
RJD MP Manoj Jha and Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra, Congress’ K C Venugopal, NCP (SP) leader Supriya Sule, CPI leader D Raja, Samajwadi Party’s Harinder Singh Malik, Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Arvind Sawant, JMM’s Sarfraz Ahmed and Dipankar Bhattacharya of CPI (ML) have also moved the top court, seeking direction for quashing the EC order.