EC illegally seeking citizenship proof through SIR, Cong & RJD say in SC

NEW DELHI: Congress general secretary K C Venugopal and RJD MP Manoj Jha on Thursday told Supreme Court that the Election Commission has no power to determine citizenship of a voter, yet through an "unconstitutional" pan-India Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of state electoral rolls is seeking proof of Indian citizenship from voters.

Jha's counsel Kapil Sibal told a bench of CJI Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi that the kind of documents that are being sought from voters through enumeration forms under SIR will disfranchise lakhs and lakhs of voters who would not have documents to show their date of birth, landholding ownership or parents birth certificates. "That is why we are insisting that Aadhaar must be the basis for enrolment in voter list," Sibal said.




For Venugopal, senior advocate A M Singhvi said the basis and ground for SIR are both wrong. EC is conducting a pan-India SIR when Representation of the People Act empowers it to conduct it for a constituency. The SC asked if the reason for SIR is to eliminate the dead from the voter list, would such a reason confine the exercise to one constituency or all constituencies?

Singhvi, also appearing for TMC MP Mahua Moitra and NGO People's Union for Civil Liberties, agreed with Sibal and said the entire exercise is exclusionary. "EC is conducting this exercise with a figment of imagination that masses of illegal migrants are marauding across India. And, the procedure adopted for conducting this exclusionary exercise is neither prescribed by the Constitution nor the RP Act," he said.

Venugopal's counsel said, "There had been several revisions of electoral rolls since 2003. On one hand, EC is not asking those whose names figure in the 2003 voters' list for any document. On the other hand, a voter enrolled after 2003 is being discriminatorily asked to prove everything, including citizenship."

"Through this exercise to illegally seek proof of citizenship, EC is converting itself into a citizenship tribunal, which is beyond its constitutional mandate. EC can supplement the process prescribed in the RP Act, but not supplant it," Singhvi said.

Sibal said teachers and other govt employees are engaged as booth level officers (BLOs) who have neither the knowledge nor expertise in scrutinising documentary proofs of citizenship nor are they legally empowered to do so as determination of citizenship is entrusted to the ministry of home affairs.

Countering Sibal's assertion, EC counsel Eklavya Dwivedi said BLOs do not scrutinise documents. This is being done by electoral registration officers, who are SDM-level bureaucrats. Sibal said it is the BLO who scrutinises documents and sends doubtful cases to ERO. The arguments would continue Tuesday.
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