New Delhi: The Supreme Court is scheduled to deliver its judgement on Wednesday on a batch of petitions challenging the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar.
The pleas have claimed that the Election Commission does not have the powers under Article 326 of the Constitution, the Representation of the People Act, 1950 and the Rules made under it to carry out SIR on such a larger form.
A bench headed by Chief Justice Surya Kant had on January 29 reserved its verdict on the pleas, including the one filed by NGO Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR).
The SIR in Bihar was conducted in the first phase of the exercise.
The top court had commenced final arguments in the matter on August 12 last year, when it observed that inclusion or exclusion of names in the electoral rolls falls within the constitutional remit of the Election Commission.
The poll authority had come out with the names of 65 lakh people who were removed from the draft electoral rolls published as part of the SIR exercise.
According to the SIR notification, voters who were not present in the 2002 or 2003 rolls had to show ancestral linkage with someone present in the rolls then.
The EC had defended the SIR exercise, maintaining that Aadhaar and voter identity cards cannot be treated as conclusive proof of citizenship.
It was alleged by the petitioners that the electoral rolls revision was an “NRC-like process” where the poll body was verifying citizenship, a power which vests in the central government.
Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for ADR, had questioned the timeline for the completion of the exercise and the data of 65 lakh voters who were declared dead or migrated or registered in other constituencies.
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