In a bold political and legal move, leaders of eight opposition parties have approached the Supreme Court of India against the Election Commission's decision to carry out a "special in-depth revision" of voter list in Bihar. The petition has been filed just months ahead of the scheduled assembly elections in the state.
The petitioners include KC Venugopal (Indian National Congress), Supriya Sule (Nationalist Congress Party - Sharad Pawar), D Raja (Communist Party of India), Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) leaders, Harinder Malik (Samajwadi Party), Arvind Sawant (Shiv Sena - UBT), Sarfaraz Ahmed (Jharkhand Mukti Morcha) and Dipankar Bhattacharya (Communist Party of India - Marxist-Leninist).
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Earlier, RJD MP Manoj Jha, Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), PUCL, activist Yogendra Yadav and Lok Sabha MP Mahua Moitra had also moved similar challenges before the Court.
"This is an impossible task," argued senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for RJD, during an urgent mention of the matter before a bench of Justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and Joymalya Bagchi. The Court agreed to list the petitions for hearing on July 10.
Senior advocates Dr Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Gopal Sankaranarayanan and Shadan Farasat joined the representation on behalf of the petitioners.
They collectively raised grave concerns about the impact of the Election Commission's direction on lakhs of voters. The petitioners informed the Court that if voters fail to submit the required forms and documents within the stipulated time-limit, they may be removed from the electoral rolls - even those who have voted regularly for over twenty years.
"There are 8 crore voters and 4 crore have to be counted," Singhvi said.
"They will not accept Aadhaar cards or voter ID cards," Sankaranarayanan said.
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The lawyers highlighted that the deadline is extremely stringent, with July 25 being the deadline set, warning that non-adherence to it could lead to exclusion from the voters' list.
During the hearing, Justice Dhulia said, "The deadline has no sanctity as the notification for elections has not been issued yet."
Recognizing the gravity of the matter, the Supreme Court allowed the petitioners to give advance notice to the Election Commission and scheduled the next hearing for Thursday, July 10.