The Supreme Court on Friday said that the Election Commission of India’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise is a “continuing process” and the election watchdog should consider the representations of voters who were wrongly deleted from the electoral roll as and when it is alerted of such cases .
Following this, the ECI had published the final electoral roll in February this year in which 0.857 million people were deleted out of the total 269.5 million voters enumerated in the state. Over 20 million voters in UP were deleted from the rolls following the SIR exercise. Also Read I Election Commission’s SIR exercise identifies just 1,600 foreigners on voter lists in six states
Stating that Keralam voters deleted during SIR can approach ECI with their representations, a bench headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant said that a formal order extending verification of rolls is not required as sought by the petitioners. Senior advocate DS Naidu appearing for ECI pointed out that the commission can only act in cases where there is an “element of truth” even as the court left it to the poll panel to take “corrective” steps.
The order was passed in a batch of petitions filed against the conduct of SIR exercise in Keralam last year.
