The Congress leader's questions stem from the Home Minister’s consistent rhetoric during election campaigns, where he often emphasises the need to purge electoral rolls of non-citizens, or "infiltrators."
The upcoming crucial EC presser has triggered sharp political reactions across party lines in the aftermath of the highly controversial Bihar SIR.
A Bench comprising Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi asked the BSLSA to instruct its district-level units to ensure that paralegal volunteers and legal aid counsel are available to provide free assistance to affected voters.
Appearing for the petitioner-organisation Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), Advocate Prashant Bhushan urged the Court to direct the ECI to publish both the list of 3.66 lakh voters additionally deleted from the final rolls and the names of the 21 lakh persons newly included.
The Court sought to know whether the names added in the final list were of the new voters or of those who were previously deleted from the draft electoral roll the poll panel had released earlier.
Describing Bihar as the epicentre of India’s democratic battle, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and DMK president MK Stalin on Wednesday blamed the ECI for becoming a toy acting according to the key, resulting in the mass deletion of 65 lakh voters in the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, which was nothing but terrorism and murder of democracy.
Nobel laureate Amartya Sen on Saturday criticised the Bihar Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, cautioning that under the pretext of strengthening the system, the rights of the poor could be undermined.
A Bench of Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi said the excluded individuals may apply online either on their own or with the help of booth-level agents (BLAs) of the 12 recognised political parties.
The Supreme Court expressed surprise at political parties’ inaction in Bihar’s voter list revision, noting only two objections despite 85,000 new voters added. ECI told the court that details of 65 lakh excluded electors have been published online and displayed across villages.
CPI MP P Sandosh Kumar said that the much-hyped press conference of the ECI turned out to be a damp squib and answered none of the questions raised by the Opposition.
