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New Delhi: RJD MP Manoj Jha on Wednesday told the Supreme Court that the Election Commission has no power to classify voters as non-citizens or to delete them from electoral rolls as it can only flag people with doubtful citizenship to the Union govt, which alone can decide citizenship disputes.Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for Jha, told a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi that EC cannot strike off names of voters from electoral roll by terming their citizenship doubtful and deprive them of their valuable democratic right to choose their representative.Reiterating a point that he has made in almost every case that touched upon elections be it EVMs or constitutional amendments, Sibal said, “The judgment that the court will render in this case will be no ordinary one, for it will decide the future of democracy of India.”Sprinkling his criticism of SIR and the alleged opaque process adopted by EC with repeated refrains of “not fair”, Sibal said once the EC flags a doubtful citizenship case to the Centre, it must not remove the voter’s name from electoral roll till the govt decided the dispute over citizenship.Justice Bagchi said once an objection to a person’s citizenship is raised before the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO), she will seek documentary proof and hear parties to decide the citizenship dispute. How can ERO decide who is an illegal migrant, Sibal asked, adding that crores of voters are being deleted on flimsy grounds.CJI Kant-led bench said a hue and cry was raised over deletion of 65 lakh names from Bihar voters list. Did a single person file an appeal, it asked and said the initial apprehensions about large-scale deletion did not come true. He said the EC has not given a single reason why it is conducting pan-India SIR, as is required under the mandate to EC for carrying out special revision of electoral rolls. Why is such an exercise required to be done near the elections, EC has no answer, he said.Social activist Yogendra Yadav said wherever SIR was conducted, the ratio of female voters has declined. The large-scale deletion of women voters is because of the technically faulty SIR, he said, adding that because only special revision was carried out in Assam the ratio of women voters increased.A tired bench of CJI Kant and Justice Bagchi, which has been hearing arguments on petitions challenging the constitutional validity of SIR spread over the past three months, told the petitioners’ counsel to conclude their arguments in 45 minutes on Thursday.
