Petitioners question EC’s authority to conduct SIR

On behalf of the petitioners, senior advocates Kapil Sibal and Abhishek Manu Singhvi contended before a Bench led by CJI Surya Kant that the poll panel can’t fall back upon its plenary powers under Article 324 of the Constitution to justify the SIR in view of precedents which hold that once the field was occupied by a parliamentary enactment (in this case the Representation of People Act), the EC was bound to act as per the statute.

“The Election Commission, in the garb of passing orders for regulating the conduct of elections, cannot take upon itself the purely legislative activity which has been reserved, under the scheme of the Constitution, only to Parliament and the state legislatures,” Singhvi submitted.

“This is an en masse exercise which the EC is drawing from Article 324, which is not allowed. This is a lack of jurisdiction… plugging of loopholes here and there will not help… the SIR form can only come from delegated legislation and then rules,” Singhvi told the Bench, which also included Justice Joymalya Bagchi.

“Going by this, we have to accept that constitutional power (Article 324) is limited by the statutory powers (RP Act)… Going by your argument, the EC will never have the power to do the (SIR) exercise ...it’s not a routine/ daily update...if any process is transparent, it will be adopted by the EC,” the CJI told Singhvi.

The Bench said, “If your (applicant’s) father’s name is not there on the (2003 voter) list and you too did not work on it...then perhaps you may have missed the bus.”

Sibal raised the question over the scope of the power of booth-level officers (BLOs), asking, “Can the BLO judge if a person is of unsound mind?...It’s a dangerous proposition and unreasonable, both substantively and procedurally, to have a schoolteacher deployed as a BLO to determine citizenship,” he argued.

The Bench, however, said, “We want to independently interpret this, dehors what the (Election) Commission has done,” and posted the matter for further hearing on Tuesday.

The Bench had on Wednesday said that Aadhaar should be accepted as a final proof of citizenship.