Former Supreme Court judge Rohinton Fali Nariman urged the apex court to review the law on election commissioners’ appointments. He questioned the Election Commission’s functioning after many voters faced exclusion. “You can't have an election commission which functions or malfunctions like this,” Nariman said while speaking in Rajkot recently.
Former Supreme Court judge Rohinton Fali Nariman has urged the apex court to quickly decide the challenge to the law on election commissioners’ appointments, questioning voter exclusions and the Election Commission's functioning, his concern coinciding with Supreme Court Justice Ujjal Bhuyan saying that a process that stripped millions of Indian citizens of their voting rights violates the constitutional order.
Nariman was speaking on ‘The Constitution and the Common Man’at Rajkumar College in Rajkot. His criticism focused on the process of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and the poll panel's independence.
.”You can't have an election commission which functions or malfunctions like this,” Nariman said, LiveLaw reported.
He questioned why the scale of voter exclusions had not prompted the Supreme Court to halt the SIR exercise.
“In West Bengal elections, 90 lakh voters were disenfranchised; that is an astounding figure. 90 lakh voters getting disenfranchised did not somehow move the Supreme Court enough to stay this,” he said, in remarks shared by LiveLaw on X.
The 90 lakh figure includes those the EC categorised as dead or permanently shifted.
“Out of those who were disenfranchised, some 22 lakh voters actually filed appeals. The others must be people who don't have the wherewithal for access to justice. And of these 22 lakh voters, some 1 lakh voter appeals were decided 93 per cent in favour of the voters.”
Nariman alleged that the exclusions had affected both citizens’ rights and the election’s outcome.
“So, you can imagine this was a completely illegal knocking out of the common man, the citizen of India, in order that a government obtains what it wants. And in West Bengal, we saw, it ousted the government of the day and brought in the government of the Centre. Now, these are very very disturbing things that are happening in our country today,” he said.
Nariman questioned the government’s influence over appointing election commissioners, arguing that protection against removal alone could not ensure their independence.
"I hope the apex Court and the institution to which I once belonged steps in immediately and rectify these things,” he said.
The Supreme Court has seen repeated challenges to the SIR right from Bihar where it was first rolled out.
“Now that the ECI is publishing a revised draft, your concern is that about 65 lakh voters might be missing. We are monitoring this as a judicial authority. If there is mass exclusion, we will step in. Just bring 15 living people who have been left out,” Justice Joymalya Bagchi had told petitioners in one Bihar case.
Since then, the SIR exercise has been rolled out across India with around 13 crore names deleted. And despite the Supreme Court repeatedly saying that exclusion in SIR will not affect citizenship, those whose names were deleted have faced many hurdles ranging from exclusion from government benefits to the police refusing to clear passport verifications of those whose names are not part of the SIR.
In separate remarks on Sunday, Supreme Court Justice Ujjal Bhuyan said a process that stripped millions of Indian citizens of their voting rights would violate the constitutional order.
“No amount of whataboutery can justify it,” he said while delivering the valedictory address at the 19th Justice Bodh Raj Sawhney Memorial Moot Court Competition at NALSAR University of Law in Hyderabad.