The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the power of
the Election Commission of India to conduct a Special Intensive Revision (SIR)
exercise of electoral rolls, saying that it "advances the constitutional
imperative of free and fair elections".
It can't be said that the poll panel acted outside
statutory powers by exercising SIR, observed a bench headed by Chief Justice
Surya Kant.
"We are unable to conclude that the impugned
exercise is a process resorted to solely for administrative convenience. On the
contrary, we hold that the electoral SIR advances the constitutional imperative
of free and fair elections," the bench said.
The pleas challenging SIR claimed that
the Election Commission does not have powers under Article 326 of the
Constitution, the Representation of the People Act, 1950 and the Rules made
under it to carry out SIR in a larger form.
On January 29, the top court reserved its verdict on
the pleas, including one filed by the NGO Association for Democratic Reforms
(ADR).
The SIR in Bihar was conducted in the first phase of
the exercise.
The top court commenced final arguments in the
matter on August 12 last year, when it observed that inclusion or exclusion of
names in the electoral rolls falls within the constitutional remit of the
Election Commission.
The poll authority had come out with the names of
6.5 million people who were removed from the draft electoral rolls published as
part of the SIR exercise.
According to the SIR notification, voters who were
not present in the 2002 or 2003 rolls had to show ancestral linkage with
someone present in the rolls then.
Defending the SIR exercise, the EC maintained that
Aadhaar and voter identity cards cannot be treated as conclusive proof of
citizenship.
The petitioners alleged that the electoral rolls
revision was an "NRC-like process" where the poll body was verifying
citizenship, a power which vests in the central government.