While hearing petitions challenging the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) being conducted by the Election Commission on Tuesday (2nd December), the Supreme Court objected to Senior Advocate Prashant Bhushan making derogatory remarks against the poll body.
Making submissions against the revision of the voter list through SIR, Bhushan claimed that the exercise was being conducted in a “hurry” which has led to the death of several Booth Level Officers (BLOs). “Why this hurry? It led to a situation where 30 BLOs committed suicide. Every BLO had to go house to house. What will happen to migrant workers?” claimed Bhushan, representing the Association of Democratic Reforms. “You (the Election Commission) said you will not follow any norms of transparency… you will not give data of the voters, you will not give the disclosures of applications and deletion on the website,” he added.
Bhushan did not stop here and went on to criticise the Election Commission by calling the top election body a “despot”. “If you give plenary powers to the Election Commission of India, it will become a despot,” said Bhushan. Responding to Bhushan’s degrading remarks about the Election Commission, Chief Justice Surya Kant urged him to confine himself to his submissions to pleading. “Let us not make any statements,” the CJI said.
During the last hearing of the petitions, the Supreme Court did not entertain the petitioners’ claim that the SIR was unconstitutional, and it was conceived as an ‘individuated exercise’ and not an ‘en masse/ blanket exercise’ under the Representation of Peoples Act 1950 (ROPA). The Apex Court said that, going by the petitioners’ contentions, the Election Commission will never have the power to conduct the SIR. The Supreme Court said that the SIR cannot be stopped unless it is proved that the Election Commission has no power to conduct it.
Several opposition parties, including the Trinamool Congress and some ‘social organisations’, challenged the SIR before the Supreme Court when the exercise was being carried out in Bihar to update voter rolls ahead of assembly elections in the state. The petitioners’ request was declined by the Supreme Court, citing that it was a routine exercise to revise and update electoral rolls to remove dead and bogus voters. The Apex Court said that the Election Commission was legally empowered to conduct it.