NEW DELHI (The Thursday Times) — India’s Supreme Court has asked the Election Commission why voters struck off Delhi’s draft roll are being told to re-register as first-time voters, a route that forces them to declare they have never voted before, after a third of the capital’s electorate was deleted in the special intensive revision (SIR).
A bench headed by Chief Justice Surya Kant noted on Wednesday that Form 6, which is meant for new voters, requires applicants to declare that they have not been electors before, Live Law reported. Many Delhi residents could not have received enumeration forms because they had moved house or were travelling during the exercise, the court said, and asked why they could not instead fill in the enumeration form or Form 8, which is used to change an address.
Counsel for the commission said the authorities would examine the court’s suggestions.
‘A false declaration’
The bench was hearing a petition by transparency activists Anjali Bharadwaj and Amrita Johri. Their lawyer, Prashant Bhushan, said 43 lakh of the 47.7 lakh names removed from Delhi’s draft roll on August 31 had been deleted for having shifted, and that the commission was refusing to let them use Form 8. “They are making people fill up a false declaration that they have not voted before,” he said. The deletions amount to 33% of the capital’s electorate before the revision began.
On Monday, in a separate case from Maharashtra, the chief justice told voters worried about prosecution for using Form 6: “Do not worry. Nobody will be prosecuted.” The Delhi High Court said on October 19 that such fears were “misplaced” because the instruction had come from the poll panel itself. Earlier this month the commission told states that had completed the revision to restore wrongly excluded voters through Form 6.
A purge under fire
The nationwide revision has removed well over 100 million names, according to media tallies, setting off weeks of protests demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and a challenge in the Supreme Court by the opposition INDIA bloc. The commission denies wrongdoing and says the exercise removes dead, duplicate and ineligible voters. In Karnataka alone, nearly 10 million voters have been struck off, and millions are struggling to prove their right to vote.
