SC gets plea over amendment in voter list before every election

A bench of Justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and Joymalya Bagchi on Tuesday asked petitioner Ashwini Upadhyay to remove the procedural flaws before listing the matter for hearing.

New Delhi: A petition has been filed in the Supreme Court demanding Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter list in the country, especially before parliamentary, state assembly and local body elections.

A bench of Justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and Joymalya Bagchi on Tuesday asked petitioner Ashwini Upadhyay to remove the procedural flaws before listing the matter for hearing.

On this, the petitioner sought a hearing on the petition on July 10, when other petitions will be heard. The petition has sought a direction to the Election Commission of India to conduct SIR to ensure that only Indian citizens decide politics and policy, not illegal foreign intruders.

Demography of 200 districts and 1,500 tehsils changed'
The petition said that after independence, due to large-scale illegal infiltration, fraudulent religious conversion and population explosion, the demography of 200 districts and 1,500 tehsils changed.

Demographics is destiny and dozens of districts have already seen their fate being decided by people who are not Indians.

Through elections, a nation shapes its politics and policy and therefore it is the constitutional duty of the Centre, states and the ECI to ensure that only genuine citizens cast their votes in parliamentary, state assembly and local body elections and not foreign intruders.

'Special in-depth scrutiny of voter lists from time to time necessary'
The petition said that for this, special in-depth scrutiny of voter lists from time to time is necessary.

The petitioner argued that SIR of voter lists was necessary because of the constitutional mandate for free and fair elections.

Bihar has 243 assembly constituencies. There are an estimated 8,000-10,000 illegal, duplicate and fake entries in the voter lists in each constituency. Even a minor discrepancy of 2,000-3,000 votes can affect the election results.

There is a ruckus over SIR in Bihar. In fact, several petitions have been filed in the apex court by the leaders of opposition parties of Congress, NCP (Sharad Pawar), Shiv Sena (UBT), Samajwadi Party, JMM, CPI and CPI (ML) against the decision of the Election Commission to conduct SIR before the elections in Bihar.

Apart from separate petitions by RJD MP Manoj Jha and Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra, Congress's KC Venugopal, Sharad Pawar NCP faction's Supriya Sule, Communist Party of India's D Raja, Samajwadi Party's Harinder Singh Malik, Shiv Sena (Uddhav faction)'s Arvind Sawant, Jharkhand Mukti Morcha's Sarfaraz Ahmed and CPI (ML)'s Dipankar Bhattacharya have jointly approached the apex court.

All the leaders have challenged the Election Commission's order directing SIR of voter list in Bihar and have demanded its cancellation.