The Supreme Court sought response from the Election Commission of India (ECI) on a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) regarding the issue of duplicate entries in electoral rolls.
The Bench of Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud, Justice J.B. Pardiwala and Justice Manoj Misra passed the orders on Friday on a PIL filed by NGO, Samvidhan Bachao Trust.
Appearing for the NGO, Senior Advocate Meenakshi Arora contended that the current process of updating electoral rolls primarily focused on removing names of deceased individuals or those who have changed their place of residence.
However, no concrete steps had been taken to tackle the issue of duplicate entries in the electoral rolls, she noted.
The Senior Counsel further said that the exercise for addressing these issues should have already been completed between July and August of the current year, but the same had not been done.
As per Arora, everyone who either died or shifted, their names were removed from the electoral rolls. However, duplication was done about duplication of entries. This exercise was to be carried from July-August 2023,, which did not happen.
At the outset, the Apex Court questioned the petitioner why it should intervene in the case and directed the petitioner to approach the Election Commission for redressal of her grievances.
The Senior Counsel then apprised the Bench that she had written multiple representations to the ECI to no avail.
She drew the attention of the court to the format issued in Uttar Pradesh in relation to the addition of electoral rolls and highlighted that no provision was made to deal with duplicate entries in the same.
The Senior Counsel submitted that the format of UP showed that there was nothing related to duplication, pointing out that the issue of duplication was not addressed by the state.
The Apex Court directed to serve a copy of the petition to Amit Sharma, Standing Counsel for the ECI and listed the matter for further hearing on November 24.
(Case title: Samvidhan Bachao Trust vs Election Commission of India)