SC tells EC to provide details of 3.6 lakh voters deleted after publication of draft rolls in Bihar

The Supreme Court on Tuesday directed the Election Commission to provide the details of the 3.6 lakh voters whose names were deleted after the publication of the draft electoral roll in Bihar amid the special intensive revision of the list, reported PTI.

The draft rolls were published on August 1 with the names of 7.24 crore voters – 65 lakh short of the 7.89 crore voters who were in the roll before the exercise began.

The Election Commission then started a process of adding and deleting voters from this draft roll. Between August 1 and September 30, it added 21.5 lakh voters and deleted 3.6 lakh voters, showed the final roll.

On Tuesday, a bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymlaya Bagchi said that everybody had a right to appeal against their exclusion from the list. But a solution cannot be devised if the court is not told about the persons whose names were deleted without them being sent a communication, it added.

“If anyone can give us a list that out of these 3.6 lakh voters these are the people to whom orders have not been communicated,” Bar and Bench quoted the court as observing. “We will direct them [Election Commission] to communicate. Each individual has a right to appeal.”

The court has been hearing...

Read more