The Supreme Court on Tuesday said “mistakes” may have happened in the preparation of the draft Bihar electoral roll and pointed to Election Commission of India’s willingness to correct them while petitioners reminded the court of its promise to step in if the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) led to “mass exclusion” of electors from the preliminary voters’ list published on August 1.
Appearing before a Bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi on the first day of hearing the challenge to the Bihar SIR, senior advocate Gopal Sankaranaryanan said, “My Lords promised you would step in if there was a mass exclusion. This has happened! Sixty-five lakh people have been excluded”.
Senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, appearing for the Election Commission of India (ECI), said errors were bound to occur “here and there”. “This is a draft roll. It can be corrected by the Booth Level Officers,” he reasoned.
Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, who led the petitioners’ side, said “in a small constituency, 12 people left out as dead were found alive”.
Dwivedi said the petitioners were more keen to be an “obstruction” and indulge in speculation.
Justice Kant asked Sibal whether the petitioners wanted a “roving inquiry”, and on whose behest.
“If there are people genuinely aggrieved, please give a list of their names to us. We will take action,” Justice Kant addressed Sibal.
Sibal said a larger part of the population of Bihar were poor. They would have none of the documents sought by the ECI for verification of citizenship to be included in the electoral roll.
Senior advocate AM Singhvi, also for the petitioners, submitted that many records would have been lost due to floods or migration or other reasons. Most of the population of Bihar does not have their documents in a digital form.
“Determination of citizenship is not the role of ECI. If crores of people in Bihar are already on the electoral roll, the poll body cannot ask them to produce documents to prove their citizenship again. This amounts to presumptive exclusion,” Mr. Singhvi argued.
Sibal submitted that only 3.05 per cent of people in Bihar had birth certificates, one of the 11 ‘indicative’ documents required by the ECI.
But Justice Kant dismissed the submission, saying, “Bihar is a part of India. If people in
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