The Election Commission of India (ECI) has informed the Supreme Court that the law does not require the poll body to prepare or share any separate list of names of people missing from draft electoral rolls or publish the reasons for their non-inclusion “for any reason” whatsoever.
The ECI was responding to a plea by NGO Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), represented by advocates Prashant Bhushan and Neha Rathi, to provide booth-wise list of names of approximately 65 lakh electors in poll-bound Bihar whose enumeration forms were not received along with reasons for non-submission, including death, permanent shifting out of the State, duplication or untraceability, during the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR). The NGO had also sought the publication of booth-wise lists of electors whose enumeration forms were marked “not recommended by the Booth Level Officers (BLOs).
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Urging for contempt action against the NGO for misleading the Supreme Court, the ECI responded that no such lists need to be prepared or shared of “previous” electors whose enumeration forms were not received. “No such list can be sought by the petitioner as a matter of right,” the ECI said in a separate reply filed in addition to a supplementary affidavit in the top court.
