Petitioners question Election Commission’s authority to conduct SIR

Petitioners against Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in various states and union territories on Thursday questioned before the Supreme Court the Election Commission’s authority to conduct it in the absence of any statutory backing.

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 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.

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

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 school teacher deployed as a BLO to determine citizenship,” he argued.

The Bench, however, said, “We want to independently interpret this, de hors 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.

“Aadhaar isn’t absolute proof of citizenship… That is why we said it will be one of the documents in the list... If anyone is deleted (from electoral roll) they will have to be given a notice of deletion,” the Bench had said.

“Aadhaar is a creation of a statute which governs distribution of benefits etc. but just because a person has Aadhaar for availing of some social welfare benefits.... Suppose someone belongs to a neighbouring country. Someone working as a labourer at a construction site etc and you give Aadhaar for availing ration etc. It’s a part of our constitutional ethos. But just because he was given that (Aadhaar), should he be made a voter also?” it had wondered.

It had also said the poll panel has “inherent power to determine correctness of entry in Form 6” which is filled up by a person to register himself as a voter.