PoliticsElectoral rolls
Owaisi asks Supreme Court to review Bihar SIR verdict; Delhi roll case brought forward
The AIMIM chief says election commissioners' internal objections were never placed before the court. Separately, the bench advanced a plea on deleted Delhi voters to 28 October.
Key points
- Asaduddin Owaisi filed a review petition against the judgment upholding the Bihar SIR, and a fresh challenge to the exercise.
- His petition cites reported objections by two election commissioners to decisions taken while the case was pending.
- A plea on deleted Delhi voters being asked to fill Form 6 will now be heard on 28 October.
AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi has asked the Supreme Court to reconsider its judgment upholding the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of Bihar’s electoral rolls, arguing that objections raised inside the Election Commission were never put before the judges.
The Hyderabad MP filed a review petition and, separately, a fresh challenge to the way the SIR is being carried out. Advocate Nizamuddin Pasha mentioned the second plea before Chief Justice Surya Kant on Wednesday and asked for it to be heard with similar cases. The Chief Justice said he would check and list it with the connected matters.
The review
Owaisi was not a party to the Bihar case. He has filed as a voter, an MP and the leader of a party whose Bihar unit challenged the revision. His petition says that despite the Commission’s lengthy affidavits, it did not disclose objections by its own members. It cites reports that about 14 decisions were taken over roughly 10 months without the agreement of Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, and that software used in Uttar Pradesh’s SIR generated 85,854 deletion forms with no reason given.
“It is precisely the legality of the Commission’s decision-making process that has now come into question,” the petition says. It asks the court to direct the Commission to produce its internal file notings and records.
Delhi voters and Form 6
Earlier in the day, the Chief Justice and Justice Joymalya Bagchi brought forward a plea by transparency activists Anjali Bhardwaj and Amrita Johri over Delhi’s SIR. Advocate Prashant Bhushan told the court that voters whose names were deleted are being asked to fill Form 6, which requires a declaration that the person has never voted before. “If they give false declaration, they are liable to imprisonment,” he said.
Bhushan pointed out that 30 October is the last date for correcting deletions, so the existing hearing date was too late. The court moved it from 30 to 28 October. The Chief Justice said the bench was “thinking of passing an order” that would deal with the problem.