NEW DELHI (The Thursday Times) — India’s Supreme Court on Friday told the Election Commission to take “corrective steps” against the bulk filing of applications to strike voters off the rolls in Uttar Pradesh, after petitioners said dozens of forms had targeted members of a “particular community” in a single constituency.
A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V. Mohana directed the commission to examine “the factual aspects” of the allegations about the special intensive revision of the state’s electoral rolls and file a compliance report, according to the legal news sites Bar and Bench and Live Law.
Form 7 is used to object to a name on the electoral roll or to seek its deletion. The commission’s lawyer acknowledged that such forms had been filed in bulk during the revision but said no action had been taken because they were found to be false.
The petitioners disputed that, saying 32 deletion applications had been lodged against members of one community in one constituency and that two of the forms were signed by booth-level officers. “There are material inconsistencies and irreconcilable facts,” their lawyer said, calling it “an orchestrated effort”. He said police cases had been registered over similar complaints in Telangana and Karnataka but not in Uttar Pradesh, and that the culprits had therefore “become emboldened”.
Separately, the Allahabad High Court asked Uttar Pradesh’s state election commission to explain the alleged deletion of 32 people from a panchayat voter list in a village in Balrampur district, while names of people who did not live there were allegedly added.
The revision has become one of India’s most bitter political fights. Opposition parties accuse the commission of purging Muslim and lower-caste voters ahead of state elections, after nearly 10 million names were struck off in Karnataka and the Supreme Court questioned the treatment of voters removed in Delhi.
