NEW DELHI: Supreme Court on Thursday told Election Commission to keep documents ready to counter the allegation by NGO Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) that special intensive revision of Bihar’s electoral rolls failed to weed out more than 5 lakh duplicate voters.For the NGO, advocate Prashant Bhushan alleged before a bench of CJI Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi that even the duplicate names pointed out by petitioner Yogendra Yadav thro-ugh a presentation before SC in Oct continued to remain on the final voter list published by EC after completion of SIR.Displaying astonishing adamancy, EC refuses to run the deduplication software — which is in its possession — through the voter list which could eliminate the 5 lakh duplicate voters, Bhushan said, adding that the SIR exercise in Bihar lacked transparency at every stage as the commission refused to divulge details of the process it adopted to add or delete names from the final list.After hearing Bhushan, the bench told poll panel counsel Eklavya Dwivedi that “EC must respond to these factual aspects. Keep your records ready. EC is required to demonstrate that it scrupulously followed the rules and regulations set by itself for SIR”. Dwivedi said EC had filed an affidavit stating that the rules, regulations as well as the directions of SC were complied with.Bhushan said the purported exercise was to strike off foreigners and illegal migrants from the voter list, but EC was neither constitutionally, statutorily nor judicially empowered to determine a voter’s citizenship. He said if a BLO found a voter’s citizenship to be doubtful, EC could refer the case to the competent authority. Till the authority took a final decision, which was amenable to appeal before a court, EC could not remove that person from the voter list if s/he claimed in an affidavit that s/he was an Indian citizen, he said.Appearing for a petitioner, senior advocate Shoeb Alam said though the general power for conduct and superintendence of elections was entrusted to EC, the commission could not claim to possess powers beyond what was statutorily prescribed.Major changes in 20 years in voter rolls: Govt
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