‘Can decide citizenship for registration as voters’: EC tells SC

New Delhi: The Election Commission on Thursday told the Supreme Court that it could determine citizenship only to the extent of registration as a voter and could not deport anyone or decide if a person has a visa to stay in India.

Vehement submissions to this effect were made by senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi on behalf of the poll panel before a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi.

The bench resumed final hearings on a batch of petitions that challenged the EC’s SIR exercise in several states, including Bihar, raising constitutional questions on the scope of the poll panel’s powers, citizenship, and the right to vote.

At the outset of the proceedings, Dwivedi referred to Article 326 of the Constitution to support the decision of the EC to undertake special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and said it provides for elections based on adult suffrage.

He submitted that adult suffrage, in its constitutional sense, consists of three distinct elements, all of which must be satisfied at the stage of registration.

“Unless these three conditions are satisfied, one will not be entitled to be registered as a voter,” Dwivedi argued, adding that if a person is found, upon proper reasoning, not to be a citizen and is still included in the rolls, it would “go against the grain of the Constitution.”

The lawyer relied on Section 16 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, to contend that Parliament has made it explicit that only citizens are entitled to be registered as electors.

Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for petitioner NGO Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), said while there was no dispute that citizenship is a prerequisite for voting, the core question was whether the poll panel has the authority to determine citizenship at all.

The CJI said the commission’s stand was that it was only identifying citizens, not adjudicating citizenship in a broader sense. Dwivedi said the EC’s role is limited and “it can determine citizenship only to the extent of registration as a voter … We cannot deport anyone or decide whether a person has a visa to stay in India. Those issues are not our concern.”

The bench said that while the poll panel cannot act as the authority to grant citizenship, it can hold an inquiry to verify whether a person claiming to be a citizen is genuine for electoral purposes. Dwivedi said the poll panel was adopting a liberal approach by accepting entries from the 2003 electoral rolls as a baseline, and the persons whose parents were present in the rolls before 2003 were being accepted, and those born between 1985 and 1986, who were eligible to vote in 2003, were included in the SIR.