New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday sought a response from the Election Commission of India on two aspects -- how does the poll watchdog determine an entry is a duplicate entry and how does it verify that a voter has passed away – while hearing a plea raising the issue of duplicate entries in the electoral rolls.
A three-judge bench led by Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud and comprising Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, during the hearing, orally remarked that it cannot do anything which holds up the electoral exercise and the Election Commission has submitted all that has been done. However, the petitioner's counsel insisted on the importance of the issue.
The bench asked the advocate Amit Sharma, representing the EC, how does the EC determine that certain entries are duplicated. And, how does information about the death of a voter come to the ECI?
Senior advocate Meenakshi Arora, representing the petitioner, contended that when the chief electoral officer issues notices to all district collector officers to carry out the process, the officer mentions the deletions of the names of the dead and those who have shifted, but he does not mention about the duplication at all.
Arora stressed that EC, in its counter affidavit, has not addressed the issue regarding duplication. The apex court was informed that the final electoral rolls will be published later this month. The bench asked EC’s counsel to give a break up on persons identified as dead, shifted residence, and deleted from duplication thereafter.
Arora, referring to Uttar Pradesh, stressed that while the chief electoral officer instructs the district officers to carry out verification of the dead or shifted, there was no column for multiple entries / duplicate entries. Citing the process of de-duplication, where duplicate entries in the electoral rolls are identified through computerisation, the petitioner's counsel submitted that having excellent instructions in place would not resolve the issue, but those instructions have to be implemented on the ground.
After hearing submissions, the top court asked the EC counsel to file its response in the matter. The apex court was hearing the petition filed by Samvidhan Bachao Trust, an NGO, raising the issue of duplicate voter entries.
