SC upholds special intensive revision of voter rolls, says exercise ‘advances free and fair polls’
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Upholding the legality of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls conducted by the Election Commission, the Supreme Court on Wednesday said the exercise “advances the constitutional imperative of free and fair elections”, reported Bar and Bench.
The Election Commission has the powers to conduct the exercise under Article 324 of the Constitution, read with the 1950 Representation of the People Act, Live Law quoted a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi as saying.
Article 324 establishes the Election Commission and vests in it the power of superintendence, direction, and control over the preparation of electoral rolls and the conduct of all elections.
Citizenship question
However, the bench noted that the poll panel’s inquiries into an individual’s citizenship status for the purpose of including them in the voter list do not mean that it can decide on whether the person is an Indian citizen, Live Law reported.
“Such an inquiry does not amount to a determination of citizenship in the strict sense and any action taken pursuant thereto is confined to electoral consequences alone,” Kant was quoted as saying.
The court directed the Election Commission to forward to the Union government within four weeks the names of the persons who had been deleted from Bihar’s electoral rolls on account of doubtful citizenship, so that the adjudication on their citizenship...