NEW DELHI, Aug 22: The Supreme Court on Friday directed the Election Commission of India (ECI) to allow excluded voters to submit claims through online mode besides making physical submissions in the special intensive revision (SIR) exercise of electoral roll in poll-bound Bihar.
\nA bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi allowed claim forms to be submitted along with Aadhaar card number and any one of the 11 acceptable documents in the SIR.
\nExpressing surprise over political parties not coming forward in filing objections related to 65 lakh excluded voters, the top court directed the chief electoral officer of Bihar to implead them in the court proceedings.
\n\u201cAll the political parties shall file the status report by the next date of hearing on the claim form they had facilitated in filing by excluded voters,\u201d the bench said as it posted the matter for September 8.
\nThe bench directed the election officials to furnish an acknowledgement receipt to the booth level agents of the political parties, who submit the claim forms of excluded voters physically.
\nSenior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, appearing for the poll panel, urged the court to give the ECI a 15-day window to show there was no exclusion.
\n\u201cThe political parties are making hue and cry and things are not bad. Repose faith in us and give us some more time. We will be able to show you there are no exclusions,\u201d Dwivedi said.
\nThe ECI informed the bench that around 85,000 individual voters who were excluded in draft rolls had submitted their claim forms and over 2 lakh new voters had come forward to register their names in the electoral rolls under the SIR exercise in the state.
\nOn August 14, the top court directed the poll panel to publish by August 19 details of the 65 lakh voters excluded from the draft electoral rolls in poll-bound Bihar to enhance \u201ctransparency\u201d in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the voters\u2019 list and allow Aadhaar as an acceptable document for identity proof.
\nObserving that the EC should put at rest the \u201cnarrative being built\u201d against it, the bench had also ordered that the details should include reasons for their non-inclusion during the ongoing SIR exercise. \u201cTransparency will create voter confidence.\u201d
\nThe revision of the voters\u2019 list in Bihar\u2013the first since 2003\u2013has sparked a huge political row. The SIR\u2019s findings have reduced the total number of 7.9 crore registered voters in Bihar, from before the exercise, to 7.24 crore. (Agencies)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NEW DELHI, Aug 22: The Supreme Court on Friday directed the Election Commission of India (ECI) to allow excluded voters to submit claims through online mode…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":62785,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62784","post","has-post-thumbnail","category-national"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/earlypostdaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/earlypostdaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/earlypostdaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earlypostdaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earlypostdaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62784"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/earlypostdaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62786,"href":"https:\/\/earlypostdaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62784\/revisions\/62786"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earlypostdaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/earlypostdaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earlypostdaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earlypostdaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}