Supreme Court notice to Election Commission on revision of voters' list

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday issued notice to the Election Commission seeking its response to the petition filed by Marri Shashidhar Reddy, Congress leader, challenging the Commission’s order passed on September 8 arbitrarily terminating the revision of voter rolls in Telangana state. A Bench of Justices A.K. Sikri and Ashok Bhushan sought the EC’s response in one week on the petition, which sought a stay of the order and to direct the EC to urgently take necessary steps to revise the rolls and hear objections of voters during the pendency of this petition. 

The petitioner also sought directions to the EC to fix defects in existing voters lists across in TS and Andhra Pradesh.  A Bench of Justices A.K. Sikri and Ashok Bhushan sought the EC’s response in one week on the petition, which sought a stay of the order and to direct the EC to urgently take necessary steps to revise the electoral rolls and hear objections of voters during the pendency of this petition. The petitioner also sought urgent directions to the EC to cure serious and mass defects in existing voter rolls across constituencies in the States of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh

The petitioner submitted that the Telangana Assembly was dissolved on September 6 and on September 8 the EC passed the order and terminated the process of revision of voter lists so as to impinge upon the conduct of free and fair elections in the State. The defects include the duplication of voters and an inexplicable deletion of several lakhs of voters from the rolls. He said as per the schedule the final voter list across the State of Telangana, with 01.01.2019 being the qualifying date for voters was to be published on January 4, 2019 and after the dissolution of the Assembly this was abruptly stopped.  As per the September 8 order the final rolls are to be published on October 8.

He contended that the September 8 order amounted to an arbitrary exercise of its electoral powers due to its retrospective decision to truncate the voter revision process. The truncated process of electoral roll revision is manifestly arbitrary since it does not give adequate time to cure mass and serious deficiencies in the voters list that affect over 48 lakh voters in the State of Telangana and close to 20 per cent of its voting population.

He said some of the deficiencies include duplicate voters being present on rolls across 119 constituencies of Telangana and mass unjustified deletion of voters from the rolls of both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. Further, there are also lakhs of voters simultaneously present on the rolls of both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, a fact seemingly acceded to by the EC.