The decision was reached by the Supreme Court on Friday, when it ordered the Election Commission of India (ECI) to accept Aadhaar cards as well as any one of the 11 other documents listed by the commission as supporting documents to prove the identity of the voter during the current Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise in the state of Bihar. The Court noted that the whole exercise should be made voter-friendly, such that no bona fide voter would be excluded from the election roll.
The course was given at the time of listening to an appeal against mass deletions of names in draft electoral rolls. Earlier this week, on August 18, the ECI had disclosed that 65 lakh voters had been struck off the list as a result of the revision. Noting this, the Court requested the poll panel to ensure that the voters have the opportunity to post their claims online and even physically by means of the Aadhaar document and any other acceptable form of identification.
To this end, the Court has also directed that booth-level agents (BLAs) of political parties should help voters fill in forms as required. In addition, the Court stated that it should implead all the significant sides of politics as the respondents of the case to allow the case to be listed in the matters of transparency and accountability. The bench noted with concern that there was “inaction” on the part of the political parties, with two objections only lodged against the deletion of the names of lakhs of voters, even when their agents were active and in units at the booth level.
The Court too noted the submission of the ECI that approximately 85000 new voters had been registered in the SIR activity. The revision process has been firmly criticised by the opposition parties on the basis that the names of actual voters were removed without thorough verification. They protested that the failure to include Aadhaar in the list of valid documents to include people as voters renders the exercise unfair, as Aadhaar is one of the most common identity proofs in the nation.
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