NEW DELHI: Election Commission on Tuesday told Supreme Court that scrutiny of citizenship during SIR of voter lists was only meant to ensure deletion of non-citizens from electoral rolls and did not extend to termination of citizenship or deportation. EC, through senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, told a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi that Article 326 of the Constitution mandated that only Indian citizens were entitled to be included in the electoral rolls.For this purpose and this alone, EC was entitled to inquire and conclude whether a person was an Indian citizen, entitling him to be a voter. “If a person is found not to be a citizen of India by EC, then his name will either not be included in the voter list or, if it is there, then it would be struck off,” he said.Dwivedi said no person with a shadow of doubt over citizenship could be included in the voter list. However, such a determination by the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) would not automatically result in a declaration that s/he was not a citizen of India – which was the domain of the competent authorities. “The ERO’s conclusion about a voter’s citizenship being doubtful and the resultant removal of his name from the voter list can be set aside by a court of law only if it finds that the procedure adopted for such determination was perverse and illegal,” he said. “Under the SIR exercise, the citizenship of an individual for the purposes of Citizenship Act, 1955, will not terminate on account of the fact that he/she is held to be ineligible for registration in the electoral rolls,” EC said.Since the documents that could be used to establish citizenship were within a person knowledge, the burden of proof lay with the individual, it said.Dwivedi said when doubts arose about an elected representative’s citizenship, the President or the governor was constitutionally bound by EC’s opinion on whether the MP or MLA had incurred disqualification over being a non-citizen. This meant EC had the power to inquire into citizenship of MPs or MLAs if doubts arose, he said.Arguments in the matter will resume Thursday.
