The Supreme Court on Wednesday said it would hear on October 28 a plea seeking a direction to the Election Commission to place in the public domain the list of electors issued notices during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Delhi, along with specific reasons for each notice.
Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for the petitioners, mentioned the matter before a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi.
Plea seeks mechanism to restore deleted voter names
Bhushan said the petitioners had filed an application seeking a direction to the EC to provide an appropriate mechanism for including voters whose names were omitted from the electoral roll following the SIR in Delhi, without requiring them to declare that they were applying for inclusion for the first time.
He said the period for filing claims and objections under the SIR in Delhi had been extended till October 30, after which the final voter list would be published.
Bhushan said the apex court had issued notice on the main petition last month and the matter was likely to come up for hearing on October 30. He requested the bench to hear the plea before that date.
The bench advanced the hearing to October 28.
When Bhushan urged the court to hear the plea even earlier, the bench observed, "We are thinking of passing an order that will take care of it".
Petition challenges Form 6 requirement for previously enrolled voters
On September 26, the poll panel extended the deadline for filing claims and objections under the ongoing SIR in Delhi by a month, till October 30. The final voter list is now scheduled to be published on December 4.
The apex court had agreed on September 22 to hear a petition filed by Anjali Bhardwaj and Amrita Johri, which also sought disclosure of the criteria, definitions, algorithmic parameters and operational guidelines governing the classification of voters under the category of "logical discrepancies".
The petitioners recently filed an application in the pending case, seeking a direction that no previously enrolled elector be required to submit the declaration contained in Form 6, which they said was "factually inapplicable to such elector".
They also sought the prescription of an appropriate form or declaration for the inclusion of previously enrolled electors.
"The present application raises the issue arising from the mechanism prescribed for re-inclusion of previously enrolled electors whose names have been omitted from the electoral roll pursuant to the SIR in the NCT of Delhi," the application said.
The application further sought a direction to the poll panel not to reject an otherwise maintainable claim for inclusion or restoration solely because the applicant had not furnished the additional SIR declaration form.
Form 6 is an application through which an eligible person seeks inclusion in the electoral roll.
SC flags 'mechanical' issuance of SIR notices
While hearing the main petition on September 22, the apex court had told the EC that notices under the SIR exercise in Delhi were being issued "almost mechanically" and that additional safeguards should be considered.
The court had also told the poll panel that the basis for identifying a "logical discrepancy" required clarification.
Draft electoral roll excludes 47 lakh voters
On August 31, the poll panel published a draft electoral roll under which 47 lakh voters were deleted from Delhi's total electorate of 1.45 crore.
The poll panel had said more than 43.32 lakh voters were found to have shifted or were absent during the SIR. Over 2.82 lakh voters were found to have died, while more than 1.41 lakh were enrolled at multiple places.