വോട്ടർമാരുടെ അവകാശം റദ്ദാക്കാൻ തിരഞ്ഞെടുപ്പ് കമ്മീഷന് അധികാരമുണ്ടോ? സുപ്രീം കോടതിയുടെ നിർണ്ണായക ചോദ്യം

The Supreme Court on Wednesday questioned the authority of the Election Commission of India (ECI) to deprive citizens forever of their right to vote simply because they were lax in returning enumeration forms during the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, which has disenfranchised nearly 13 crore voters across the country.

"The top court is questioning the most basic premise of the SIR that has roiled the country's politics and polls for the last year, making this our top story today," says Suresh Nambath, Editor, The Hindu. "This raises questions, however, about its May verdict endorsing the Bihar SIR, as seen in our lead opinion article today."

"Let us say a voter was lax, inert, or did not respond, will that be a ground for you, the Election Commission of India, to forfeit his or her right to vote for ever? We will answer that," Justice Joymalya Bagchi, part of the Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, addressed the poll body. The court said the ECI was in "error" to force pre-existing voters, whose names were deleted from the electoral roll, to apply as new voters under Form 6 of the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960.

Senior advocate Dama Seshadri Naidu, for the ECI, said the court's Bihar SIR judgment on May 27 had mentioned that the poll body had "residuary powers".

Justice Bagchi clarified that the Bihar judgment was not a "binding precedent" and asked why the ECI had not then used these residuary powers to reach out to voters who had not responded to enumeration forms.

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