‘Aadhaar Not Proof of Citizenship’: Supreme Court Backs EC During SIR Hearing

‘Aadhaar Not Proof of Citizenship’: On Tuesday, the Supreme Court started hearing petitions challenging special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls by the Election Commission (EC) in poll-bound Bihar and Justice Surya Kant made it clear that Aadhaar can not be used as proof of citizenship.

The Supreme Court noted that it is within the mandate of EC to include and exclude citizens and non-citizens in the electoral rolls.

“Are petitioners saying that Aadhaar card is proof of citizenship? They are not saying that it is not a measure… the Aadhaar Act says so,” Bar and Bench quoted Justice Surya Kant as saying.

He added, “See, the Election Commission is correct in saying that Aadhaar can't be accepted as conclusive proof of citizenship; it has to be verified. See section 9 of the Aadhaar Act.”

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The supreme court however did not see eye to eye with the submission that the citizens in Bihar lack most documents that are demanded of them as verification by the ECI during SIR.

"This is a case of trust deficiency that's all," Justice Kant remarked during the hearing.

The bench opined that the case had to be decided in two issues first whether the Election Commission had the power to carry out the verification exercise or not as reported by India Today. "If they don't have the power, everything ends. But if they have the power, there can't be a problem," Justice Kant said.

Senior advocate Kapil Sibal who appeared on behalf of Rashtriya Janata Dal MP Manoj Jha argued that the process adopted by the EC will lead to a massive disenfranchisement, especially of those who cannot fill forms.

According to him, voters who were registered in the 2003 rolls were also requested to fill in new forms and on failure to do so, their names would have been removed based on address change yet the address had not changed.

The bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi observed, “If out of 7.9 crore voters, 7.24 crore voters responded, it demolishes the theory of one crore voters missing.”

Terming it as a “large case of trust deficit, nothing less”, the court had questioned the EC on being prepared with the facts and figures on the number of voters before the exercise, number of voters before the exercise and then and other details.

Kapil Sibal raised concerns over the mismatch basing his claim on instances, when dead voters were found alive, and alive declared dead.

Appearing on behalf of the EC, senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi told the court that there was bound to be some defects here and there in such an exercise but they could be rectified as it was merely a draft roll. According to him, approximately 6.5 crores did not require to produce documents because they existed in 2003 rolls or their parents.

Advocate Vrinda Grover called the revision “an unlawful exercise which lies within the bounds of parliament”.

Activist Yogendra Yadav slammed the drive as “the largest exercise of disenfranchisement in the history of the world”, claiming “65 lakh names have been deleted. Never in the history of India has this happened.”

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He alleged, “When I file an appeal for not including my name, it is decided after the list is frozen — and then, best of luck after five years. This is dreadful. We also have confirmation that more names of women have been deleted than men — 31 lakh women, 25 lakh men.”

Yadav also addressed procedural changes, the 2003 precedent and the presumption of swollen rolls dismissing it as “an exercise in intensive deletion” and notes that as of 2007 he was alarmed at the amount of exclusion already undertaken.

August 1 was the publishing date of the draft roll, the final roll will be published on September 30.

Opposition leaders led by Manoj Jha, Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra and Congress leaders KC Venugopal, NCP (Sharad Pawar) MP Supriya Sule, CPI leaders D Raja, SP leader Harinder Singh Malik, Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Arvind Sawant, JMM leader Sarfraz Ahmed, and CPI(ML) leaders Dipankar Bhattacharya have questioned the action stating that it might cause crores of voters to lose their rights.

Other civil society organisations, such as PUCL, ADR, as well as activists such as Yogendra Yadav have approached the court against the EC order.

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