The Supreme Court on Wednesday directed the Election Commission (EC) to present the complete information of about 65 lakh voters removed from Bihar’s Draft Voter List by 9 August. The court also said that this information should be given to the political parties as well as an NGO named Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), which has filed a petition on the issue.
What is the matter?
The Election Commission started ‘Special intensive revision campaign (SIR)’ in Bihar on 24 June. Under this, a draft voter list was released on 1 August, in which 7.24 crore voters were shown. But out of this, the names of more than 65 lakh voters were removed. The Election Commission says that these people are either dead, have gone to another place permanently, or two places.
What happened during court hearing?
Justice Suryakant, Ujjal Bhuyan and N. The bench of Kotishwar Singh told the Election Commission, ‘We need information about every voter whose name has been removed. See, on what basis the names have been removed. On the other hand, advocate Prashant Bhushan on behalf of the NGO said, ‘Political parties have been given a list of voters removed, but it did not mention who is dead, who has shifted, or whose name was wrongly removed.’ The court asked the Election Commission to file a reply by 9 August, so that the matter could be fully heard on August 12-13.
What was the demand in the ADR petition?
The Association for Democratic Reforms have demanded that a complete list of 65 lakh removed names be published. Along with every name, it should also be explained why it was removed, death, permanent transfer or any other reason.
What did the Election Commission say in the court?
In the Supreme Court, the Election Commission gave an affidavit and said, ‘We are working to clean the voter list. Our aim is to withdraw ineligible people and only the right people should be in the voter list.
What data did the commission give during SIR
In this, the names of about 22.34 lakh voters have been removed due to death. At the same time, the names of about 36.28 lakh voters who went to another place permanently are also removed from the voter list. At the same time, voters whose names were in two places are about 7.01 lakh.
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What did the Supreme Court comment before
Earlier on July 29, the Supreme Court had said that if a large number of names were removed in this process, it would intervene immediately. The court also said that the Aadhaar card and voter ID should be considered seriously valid documents and instead of removing the names, the process of adding them should be emphasized.