A special intensive revision (SIR) is a fresh preparation of the electoral roll and the absence of a voter’s name from the draft roll does not mean that it has been deleted, the Election Commission of India (ECI) told the Bombay High Court in Goa on Tuesday, distinguishing the exercise from a special summary revision (SSR) where the roll is only updated.
Also Read I ‘System can’t be honest when you win and rigged when you lose’: 124 ex-bureaucrats defend Election Commission, SIR exercise Senior advocate Ashutosh Kumbhakoni, representing ECI, told the Goa bench that unlike the routine SSR that merely updates an existing active roll, “Rule 25(2) of the RER, 1960 [Registration of Electors Rules, 1960] categorically mandates that where a roll is revised intensively, i.e. the process of SIR, it must be prepared afresh from the ground up. “The draft, therefore, contains only those who have been enumerated. A bench of justices Valmiki Menezes and Amit Jamsandekar, which was hearing a petition filed by Goa resident Paresh Salgaonkar, claiming his name was taken off the electoral roll for having changed his address prior to the enumeration phase of the SIR exercise. “A core feature of the SIR is that the Electoral Roll is prepared afresh. Under the SIR, the existing roll is not carried forward automatically.
The existing roll serves only as a reference base,” said the ECI lawyer, arguing that as the roll is being prepared afresh, a name missing from the draft roll does not technically mean it has been “deleted”. A name enters the draft roll only if the elector’s enumeration form is submitted, he said. In SSR, only new or changed cases need to act, whereas in SIR, every elector must respond,” Kumbhakoni said. The poll panel’s lawyer underlined that a voter who is not included in the draft roll “must file Form 6 to be included in the final ER, along with the prescribed declaration and supporting documents, during the claims and objections period.”
In his writ petition, Salgaonkar, a resident of St Cruz constituency in North Goa district, claimed that his name along with six other members of his family were omitted from the draft roll even though they had submitted Form 8 (for change of address). “We have tried to point out that Form 8 cannot be just left out of the loop. My client’s Form 8 was rejected on the last date of deciding the objections. So, my client had no chance to file an [appeal] against rejection of Form 8,” Rodrigues submitted. Also Read I INDIA bloc, led by Rahul Gandhi, files petition in Supreme Court over SIR voter deletions The bench questioned whether the procedure as adopted by the poll panel was in consonance with the Representation of the People Act and the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 and its provisions for revision exercises. Salgaonkar has refused to fill form 6, saying that doing so would amount to filing a false declaration as he is neither a first-time voter nor shifted to another constituency.
“A final roll is then published once these claims and objections have been decided. In effect, such a person is treated as a new applicant, a new voter, for the roll in issue. After the arguments concluded, the high court reserved its verdict in the plea.
Advocate Vivek Rodrigues, representing the petitioner, however, said the process that was followed for the SIR was a departure from the process laid down under the law, a position that ECI’s own officers had subscribed to.
The fact that the name was on the earlier roll does not by itself secure a place in the new one,” he argued.
