E-Paper
In Supreme Court, EC may share same draft roll it gave to political parties
The top court directed EC to file to file a reply by August 9 in response to allegations that over 6.5 million names were deleted from the draft rolls
New Delhi: The Election Commission of India (ECI) is likely to inform the Supreme Court that it had shared the draft electoral rolls of Bihar with various political parties on August 1 and had also circulated lists detailing reasons for the deletion of nearly 6.5 million electors, people familiar with the matter told HT on Wednesday.
The top court, which is hearing a bunch of petitions challenging the ECI’s ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in poll-bound Bihar, on Wednesday directed the poll body to file to file a reply by August 9 in response to allegations that over 6.5 million names were deleted from the draft rolls.
An official aware of the matter, requesting anonymity, said: “The roll shared with parties on August 1 has detailed classifications of the 65 lakh (6.5 million) deletions. While there is no separate category for those who didn’t fill enumeration forms, they have been grouped under ‘migrated’. Suspected foreign nationals are also under review and listed under the same head, but they are being separately verified by electoral registration officers (EROs).”
The top court’s order came on a plea filed by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), a non-profit working on electoral and political reforms, alleging that ECI removed a column titled “Uncollectable Reason” from the version of the draft roll published on August 1. The petition also sought disclosure of booth-wise deletions and their reasons.
The top court asked ECI to inform it when were the draft rolls shared to the parties, which parties received these rolls, as well as to submit the list of deleted names.
The official cited above said the draft rolls were handed over to all political parties by district collectors at 11 am on August 1, and published on the ECI’s website at 3 pm the same day. Booth-level data, the official added, was shared with political party representatives.
In a press note on July 25, the commission had said that 2.2 million electors were found deceased, 700,000 were registered in more than one place, and 3.5 million had either migrated permanently or were untraceable.
After top court’s direction on Wednesday, ECI issued a press note saying: “…lists of electors found dead, permanently shifted, having duplicate entries, or uncontactable after at least three visits by Booth Level Officers (BLOs) had been shared with all political parties and their BLAs on or before July 20.”
It further shared a series of posts with various BLAs saying they have received the draft electoral roll and separately a list of the 6.5 million individuals removed from the roll.
ECI also said that between August 1 and August 6 (9 AM), no political party had filed claims or objections related to the draft roll. However, 3,659 individual objections and claims have been submitted directly by electors.
The Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) rejected EC’s “no objections” received remarks, saying EC is trying to create an impression that everything is fine with the Bihar SIR and there are no complaints coming in.
“Nothing could be farther from the truth”, the opposition party said in a post on X, listing several concerns, including the claim that its leaders had submitted complaints which were not being counted because they were not routed through BLAs.
It also questioned the assumption that all 15,000 Form 6 applications received were from first-time voters and not from electors who had been deleted from the rolls. “We have been repeatedly asking the EC to provide us with booth level lists of deletion specifying the ground thereof, but to no avail,” the Left party added.
