Our Bureau
New Delhi
This Friday, on August 22nd, the Supreme Court has stated clearly that the voters in Bihar who were challenging their exclusions from the electoral roll in the upcoming elections this year can provide their Aadhaar card as a proof of their identity. The highest legal authority of India has directed the Election Commission to add the government-issued ID to a list of 11 others.
As per the reports the number of excluded voters from the upcoming elections later this year is somewhere around 35 lakh. The court estimated the total number after deducting the number of those said to be dead and duplicate entries – however, they were told to hurry up.
Justice Surya Kant who was presiding over the bench directed the Election Commission to file all the documents to be completed by September 1st. However, the bench that included Justice Joymalya Bagchi clarified that this filing can be completed online.
The Supreme Court also questioned some of the political parties in Bihar asking them the reason for not assisting voters to get back on the list. Many political parties have opposed the revision of voters stating that it was all done to ‘designed to disenfranchise’ the communities that usually vote for them.
However the court has stated “Political parties are not doing their jobs…”, after there were reports that the objections had been filed by individual politicians, i.e., MPs and MLAs, but not the political parties. The court expressed the sheer shock they have felt seeing what the booth level agents of these political parties have been doing rather than helping lakhs of the voters.
“We are surprised at what political parties are doing in Bihar. What are your BLAs (booth-level agents) doing? Political parties must help voters,” the court said after they were informed that only two objections, other than that of voters, had come from over 1.6 lakh BLAs from parties.
