Electoral registration officers have no power to determine citizenship of a voter and the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls suffered from severe procedural lapses, lack of transparency, and jurisdictional overreach regarding citizenship determination, the Supreme Court was told on Thursday.The submissions were made by lawyer Prashant Bhushan, appearing for one of the petitioners who is opposed to the poll body’s decision to undertake SIR of electoral rolls in various states, before a bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi on the fourth day of final arguments.
Referring to various judgements, Bhushan said, “It is very clear that it is not the job of the ERO to determine citizenship. All that they can do is to refer it to the authorities concerned if they feel that the citizenship of a person is doubtful.” The ERO will have to record reasons while referring the issue of doubtful citizens to the concerned authorities and he will have to await the decision, Bhushan said.
“Whether it is the Union home ministry under the Citizenship Act, whether it is a Foreigners Tribunal, whether it is a court, these authorities alone will determine it,” he added.
Even if a person is of unsound mind, the EC cannot delete the name from the electoral roll on its own, he said.
He alleged mass deletion of voters from the electoral rolls and said that in Bihar, when the SIR was announced, the electoral roll contained 7.89 crore names.
However, upon publication of the draft roll, approximately 65 lakh names had been deleted, he added.
Bhushan flagged a procedural anomaly in which those deleted were forced to re-apply using Form 6, a form designated for new voters.