The Supreme Court has said electoral rolls cannot “remain static” and were bound to be revised as it disagreed with the submission that special intensive revision (SIR) of voter list in poll-bound Bihar had no basis in law and ought to be quashed.
A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi was informed by NGO Association of Democratic Reforms that the exercise should not be allowed to be carried out pan-India.
Aside from the NGO, leaders of opposition parties including Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the Congress have challenged the electoral roll revision drive of the Election Commission of India (ECI) in Bihar.
Senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, appearing for the NGO, said the ECI notification on SIR ought to be set aside for want of legal basis and never being contemplated in law.
He, therefore, contended it couldn’t be allowed to go on.
The ECI can never conduct such an exercise since inception and it is being done for the first time in history and if allowed to happen only God knows where it will end, he added.
“By that logic special intensive revision can never be done. One-time exercise which is done is only for the original electoral roll. To our mind, the electoral roll can never be static,” the bench noted.
“There is bound to be revision,” the top court said, “otherwise, how will the poll panel delete the names of those who are dead, migrated or shifted to other constituencies?”
The bench went on to tell Sankaranarayanan that the ECI had residual power to conduct such an exercise as it deemed fit.
