Supreme Court takes up INDIA bloc's SIR petition, but wants one petitioner to explain his conduct

The Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to hear the INDIA bloc’s challenge to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, issuing notice to the Election Commission, Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi. It then made clear that one of the opposition leaders who brought the case had some explaining to do.

“We are issuing notice... Tagging with pending cases. But we would like to ask one of the petitioners about his conduct,” the bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi said. The notice in respect of that petitioner would be entertained only provisionally, “subject to his explaining his conduct”.

The bench did not name him in the order. The remark was widely read as directed at Lok Sabha Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi, who led Monday’s march towards the court and went into its registry with other leaders to file the petition.

What the bloc wants

The petition, filed on 12 October by Gandhi with Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav, Trinamool’s Saugata Roy and other opposition leaders, alleges large-scale deletion of voters and irregularities in the SIR. When it was filed, it asked the court to stay the revision in all states until the case is decided, to order the Commission to disclose its SIR records, and to set up an independent committee led by a retired Supreme Court judge to audit deletions.

By tagging it with the petitions already pending against the SIR in various states, the court has folded the bloc’s case into the larger fight over the revision instead of hearing it on its own. The bench said either someone should accept notice for the Commission or the petitioners should serve the respondents themselves. It also issued notice to the Centre and others on Election Commission-related pleas by AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi and others.

Before the hearing

The Congress went into the day sounding confident. Congress leader Pramod Tiwari said the opposition had approached the court to protect voting rights and had full faith in the Constitution and the Supreme Court. “More than 13 crore votes have been cut in the name of SIR,” he said.

The bloc’s leaders have made the resignation of the Chief Election Commissioner their central demand, citing a report that he took several SIR decisions on his own despite objections from the other two commissioners.

A tense run-up

The case reached the court after an uneasy week between the bloc and the bench. The Chief Justice declined to meet Kharge and Gandhi on 11 October and told them to file a petition. A day later the Congress’s Keralam unit posted, and then deleted, a demand that he resign, after he called the Delhi protests a law and order matter.

That episode was in the background on Thursday as well. In a separate matter, the court issued notice to the Congress, Gandhi and others on a plea objecting to the march to the court, observing that “nobody can browbeat judiciary”.

No date for the next hearing had been reported by Thursday afternoon.