‘Will Scrap Entire Exercise If…’: Supreme Court Warns EC Over Bihar SIR Drive

On Monday, the Supreme Court indicated that it would cancel the entire Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise of the electoral roll in the poll-bound state of Bihar in case any form of illegality was discovered in the manner in which the Election Commission ECI has gone about it.

Ruling against the survey, a court consisting of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi, said that it was assuming the top election agency, which was a constitutional body, was acting within the law and the obligatory rules in the running of the SIR.

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Even the highest court did not provide any piece-meal opinion on the matter, as it is evident that its ultimate decision would be pan-Indian to the SIR exercise.

The Supreme Court set the date of final arguments as October 7 on whether the SIR exercise would be valid in Bihar or not.

On September 8, the court had ordered that Aadhaar should be considered the twelfth valid document to be included in the electoral roll of the state of Bihar in the ongoing Special Intensive Revision. The order also came after the complaints that the election officials had been denying the order despite previous instructions.

The highest court quashed the objections presented by the Election Commission, and it was quite evident that although Aadhaar was not sufficient to establish the citizenship, it was still a valid evidence of identity or residence.

Opposition parties have attacked the SIR drive claiming that lakhs of honest voters are being removed without due verification. They claim that being omitted of Aadhaar as a 11 documents approved by the EC places undue disadvantage on the voters as Aadhaar is significantly more common amongst the rest of the IDs.

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On August 18, Election Commission released a draft list which indicated that 65 lakh names were removed during the SIR exercise.

Instead, it has censured the Opposition because of its allegations of vote chori (vote theft) and alleged that political parties were deceiving voters by laying the blame on the poll body.

Gyanesh Kumar, Chief election commissioner has also requested the congress leader and Opposition leader in the Lok Sabha congress Rahul Gandhi to submit affidavit with evidence or apologize his allegation against the poll panel.

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