SIR | Lack Of Formal Appeals Doesn't Mean There Were No Wrongful Deletions : Yogendra Yadav To Supreme Court

Political activist Yogendra Yadav told the Supreme Court today that the lack of formal appeals against deletions during the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls does not mean that there were no wrongful exclusions. Yadav said that in Bihar, many wrongfully excluded voters had to include their names as new voters on the rolls by filing Form 6 applications.Yadav, who is one of the petitioners challenging the Bihar SIR, said the absence of formal appeals under Section 24(A) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 did not mean there were no attempts by wrongly excluded voters to seek inclusion. He described the Commission's claim as a play on language.He said that many people had approached officials to get their names back on the rolls through available mechanisms rather than filing formal appeals. Yadav said many people used the only mechanism available to them – often re-registration through Form 6 with booth level officers – to return to the final rolls.“The idea that there was no appeal is absolutely false. We have lakhs of documented cases where they did not find formal appeal, they were wrongly excluded, they tried mechanisms, and the only available mechanism to them they adopted and they got in”, he said.A bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi was hearing the batch of pleas During the hearing, Yadav told that after the draft list of Bihar SIR was released, the Election Commission acknowledged deletion of 3.66 lakh voters. He said that the Commission did not recognise the remaining 65 lakh exclusions as “deletions” at all. He argued that the figure of 3.66 lakh could not be relied upon to claim that there were no appeals for the remaining names. Even within those 3.66 lakh cases, he said, there were numerous instances of unjustified deletions where names were wrongly removed and later restored, yet no formal appeals were recorded because the only mechanism offered at that stage was to seek re-inclusion rather than lodge an appeal.“There was no formal appeal but people did go to the ECI to get the names included and their names were also included. But their option was 'do you want to get your name included or file an appeal?.' So they just wanted to get their names included. Large number of names were wrongly excluded and then they were included again even in those 3.66 lakh but no formal appeal was made because that avenue was blocked”, he said.For the remaining 65 lakh excluded names, Yadav said the Commission claimed that only 36,475 inclusion claims were filed. He rejected this figure because the Commission had no mechanism to determine whether a person filing Form 6 was a new voter or someone whose name had been wrongly excluded and who was attempting to return to the rolls. He said his team analysed the data and found that 2.97 lakh names that were initially excluded reappeared in the final electoral roll of Bihar. He explained that this happened when voters approached booth level officers, were given Form 6, and registered again as new voters.He cited ECI's data showing that of about 21 lakh new registrations due to attaining the age of eligibility, only around 19.5 per cent were actually newly eligible voters aged 18–19. “I am not saying that all the 80% persons are excluded people trying to come back but that the idea that there was no appeal is absolutely false”, he added.Yadav also reiterated his broader criticisms of the design of the special revision exercise. Yadav reiterated that electoral rolls must meet three global standards: completeness, equity and accuracy. On completeness, he said the SIR resulted in a sharp decline in electoral population ratios across states, indicating a structural design defect rather than accidental errors. He said the problem was not with conducting revisions, which were necessary, but with the kind of revision undertaken. According to him, this design would inevitably lead to disenfranchisement wherever it was applied. Yadav said minor duplication could not explain exclusions running into tens of lakhs.On migration, Yadav noted that Bihar and Uttar Pradesh were out-migration states which may explain why voters reduced there after SIR. However, he pointed out that Tamil Nadu and Gujarat were in-migration states and still lost around 97 lakh and 74 lakh voters respectively following the SIR. He said this could not be explained by migration. When Justice Bagchi suggested duplication in receptor states, Yadav pointed out that all states could not lose voters simultaneously unless the entire country was migrating abroad. He pointed out that every state saw a decline except Assam, where SIR was not conducted.On equity, Yadav said women were disproportionately excluded wherever SIR was carried out. He said the gender ratio fell in every such state and that the Election Commission owed an explanation. He said 60 lakh women were additionally excluded due to the design defect, within an overall exclusion of around six...

SIR | Lack Of Formal Appeals Doesn't Mean There Were No Wrongful Deletions : Yogendra Yadav To Supreme Court

Amisha Shrivastava

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