A plea in the Supreme Court seeks a new way to restore Delhi voters deleted during the recent roll revision. Petitioners want the Election Commission to stop forcing previously enrolled voters to use Form 6. "The present application raises the issue arising from the mechanism prescribed for re-inclusion," the plea said.
A plea has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking directions to the Election Commission to create a suitable mechanism for the inclusion of voters in Delhi whose names were left out of the electoral roll after the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), without requiring them to state that they are applying for inclusion for the first time.
The application also asks that previously enrolled voters should not be made to submit the declaration in Form 6 if it is "factually inapplicable" to them, and that a separate form or declaration should be prescribed for the inclusion of such voters. Form 6 is the application through which an eligible person seeks inclusion in the electoral roll.
The application has been filed in a pending petition that had sought a direction to the poll panel to immediately place in the public domain the list of all electors who were issued notices during the SIR exercise in Delhi, along with the specific reason for each notice.
"The present application raises the issue arising from the mechanism prescribed for re-inclusion of previously enrolled electors whose names have been omitted from the electoral roll pursuant to the SIR in the NCT of Delhi," the plea said.
Filed through advocate Prashant Bhushan, the application also sought a direction to the Election Commission not to reject an otherwise maintainable claim for inclusion or restoration only because the applicant has not furnished the additional SIR declaration form.
While hearing the main petition on September 22, the Supreme Court had told the poll panel that notices under the SIR exercise in Delhi were going to people "almost mechanically" and that it should look for some additional safeguards. The court had also said the basis for identifying a "logical discrepancy" required clarification.
The plea, filed by Anjali Bhardwaj and Amrita Johri, also sought disclosure of the criteria, definitions, algorithmic parameters and operational guidelines used for classifying voters under the category of "logical discrepancies".
On August 31, the Election Commission published draft electoral rolls under which 47 lakh voters were deleted from Delhi's total voter list of 1.45 crore. The poll panel had said over 43.32 lakh voters were found to have shifted or were absent during the SIR, more than 2.82 lakh were found to have died, and over 1.41 lakh were enrolled at multiple places. The fresh application now asks the court to ensure that previously enrolled voters omitted during the exercise are given a suitable route for restoration without having to make declarations that do not apply to them.