New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday said the argument that the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls was never conducted before in the country cannot be used to examine the validity of the Election Commission’s decisions to carry out this exercise in several states.
Commencing final hearing on a clutch of petitions challenging the validity of the EC’s decisions to carry out the revision of electoral rolls in several states, a bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi said the poll panel has “inherent power to determine correctness of entry in Form 6”.
Form 6 has to be filled up by a person to register himself or herself as a voter. The bench also reiterated that the Aadhaar card does not “confer absolute proof of citizenship and that is why we said it will be one of the documents among the list of documents... If any one is deleted they will have to be given a notice of deletion”. “Aadhaar is a creation of statute for availing benefits. Just because a person was granted Aadhaar for ration, should he be made a voter also? Suppose someone belongs to a neighbouring country and works as a labourer,” the CJI said.
The bench did not seem in agreement with a particular submission and said, “You are saying the Election Commission is a post office which must accept the Form 6 submitted and include your name.”
“Prima facie, yes ... unless there is some contrary material,” senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for some of the petitioners, said.
“The Election Commission will always have this inherent constitutional jurisdiction to determine correctness of the documents...,” the bench said.
The top court also fixed the hearing on several pleas specifically challenging SIR.