Primary mandate of ECI to ensure citizens vote, says Bombay HC; 'people too can question SIR ordered after decades'

Panaji: The Bombay High Court on Thursday said that the primary mandate of the Election Commission is to ensure citizens cast their votes, and asserted that while the election body questions voter conduct, citizens are equally within their rights to ask why exercises like the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) are ordered after decades.

Hearing a petition filed by six family members whose names were deleted from the voter list, the HC's Goa bench, comprising Justices Valmiki Menezes and Amit S Jamsandekar, said the ECI's action was not in consonance with its mandate.

As per the plea filed by Paresh Salgaonkar and his family, they had moved to a new house in the same Santa Cruz assembly constituency and were instructed by the Booth Level Officer to submit Form 8 for a change of address.


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At the time of processing, errors showed up since no record of their Electors Photo Identity Cards (EPIC) was found, and as such, their Form 8 was rejected following which they moved HC.

The ECI's advocate Gaurish Agni questioned why the petitioners had not notified authorities of their relocation earlier, to which the bench remarked "the petitioner will also ask why this SIR after 24 years because he is a citizen of India, why not in between, because the number could have been controllable."

The court added that such discrepancies would never arise if updating electoral rolls was a continuous process.

"It is not about the blame game," the judges noted, pointing out that authorities have access to birth and death records and should automatically update rolls, enrolling people as soon as they turn 18, rather than rejecting applications offhand.

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The object of the Representation of the People Act and the ECI is to ensure that votes are cast by citizens, the court said, adding the election body's endeavour is to have as many eligible voters on the roll as possible.

"For that purpose, they can adopt any measures. Whatever measures that you adopt, the object has to be achieved. In that object, here and there, there may be aberrations. But the object cannot be overridden," the bench asserted.

It noted that instead of rejecting the Form 8, the authorities could have kept it in abeyance and taken it up after the SIR was completed.

"Because what happens is that if you don't keep it pending, the person escapes from the roll. He will be neither here, nor there. You finish your roll and deal with all the Form 8s. Because that is the best information for you to understand that people have shifted," the court observed.

Expressing deep concern over the automated deletions, the bench questioned the ECI's authority to drop names without giving electors a hearing.

"Show us from the Act... what empowers you to delete without a hearing? Your officers were helpless and just decided to throw it on the system. We are very perturbed by this... we are just wondering how many more who have not come to court," the court said and pointed out that such technical rejections risk taking lakhs of legitimate voters off the rolls.

The High Court observed that even if an elector approaches at an inconvenient administrative stage or with an incorrect form, the application should be kept in abeyance during the SIR rather than outright rejected.

The bench had, during the earlier hearing on Wednesday, said the draft roll under the SIR cannot be the basis for deletion of names from the voter list and held that administrative software cannot supersede statutory laws to disenfranchise voters.

The court will hear the plea further on October 5.