Not much scope for intervention on technical aspects: SC on SIR

"The SIR cannot be seen too much on procedural aspects. Let’s keep in mind that they (EC) are doing something after 20 years and the SIR cannot become an annual feature. That’s why we cannot intervene too much on the technical procedural aspects,” a Bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi said.

On behalf of petitioners challenging the exercise, senior counsel Raju Ramachandran said in the current socio-political discourse the term "migrant" was often loaded and used to imply "illegal migrant" or "exodus" rather than domestic movement of people.

"Migration does not have a domestic import... It is their livelihood which drives them. We have a brain drain which is also migration,” Justice Bagchi said, citing the example of IT professionals from Kolkata taking flights to southern states for opportunities.

"In North India, trains are full of farm workers from Bihar... they are virtually auctioned and by the time they come to Punjab, they are in tears,” the CJI said, adding many such workers have settled in Punjab, their children have mixed with the local culture, yet their roots remain in Bihar or West Bengal.

“See the other side, they are entering Punjab, but the youth of Punjab for all means are migrating abroad, so they (migrants from Bihar) are filling that space,” said the Bench which will resume the hearing on December 16.

The CJI cited a recent visit to Havelock Island where out of a population of 25,000, approximately 22,000 were migrants.

Contending that the poll panel could not assume the role of a "suspicious neighbour" or a "policeman" treating voters with doubt, Ramachandran sought to assail the conceptual foundation of the SIR, asserting that the EC's constitutional mandate was to act as a facilitator and enabler of voting rights.

"The negative way of viewing one's own role is that of a disabler or that of a suspicious policeman… When there is an adequate statutory scheme regarding citizenship, the poll panel cannot become a 'nosy parker' instructing booth-level officers (BLOs) to cast doubt on voters,” Ramachandran submitted.

Initiating an inquiry based on a BLO's suspicion effectively amounts to "suspending citizenship", he said.