Mamata announces ₹2 lakh aid for 39 deceased
NEW DELHI, Dec 2: The Election Commission’s reasons like ‘rapid urbanisation’ and ‘frequent migration’ for undertaking special intensive revision of electoral rolls in various states are “untenable” and its power to revise rolls of any constituency does not empower it to do it pan-India, the Supreme Court was told on Tuesday.
These strong arguments were advanced by senior advocate Abhishek Singhvi, appearing for one of the petitioners, before a bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi which continued for the third consecutive day its hearing on a batch of petitions challenging the legality of the EC’s ongoing intensive revision of electoral rolls in several states.
At the fag end of the hearing, the bench took strong note of the submissions of lawyer Prashant Bhushan terming the EC as a ‘despot’.
He termed the decision of undertaking SIR “unprecedented”, saying “For the first time, a voters’ list is being prepared from a clean slate. This is a de-novo preparation, not a special revision.
To emphasise the requirement of constituency-specific reasons, Singhvi referred to the Thakurdwara case in Uttar Pradesh, the only historical instance of a genuine special revision.
“In Thakurdwara, a detailed inquiry found 15,000 wrongful deletions and 21,000 wrongful additions. That was an individualised exercise based on concrete findings,” he noted, contrasting it with the EC’s current “statewide classification”, which he called “a new innovation” never attempted in 75 years.
Singhvi also launched a constitutional challenge, asserting that the EC’s new classification of post-2003 voters into multiple documentary requirement categories violated Article 14’s anti-arbitrariness doctrine, which evolved through landmark cases.
BENGAL CM ANNOUNCES AID FOR DECEASED
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday announced a compensation of Rs 2 lakh each for the families of 39 people who, she claimed, died due to “SIR-induced panic”, including several suicide cases reported since the SIR of electoral rolls began last month.
Thirteen others, including three booth-level officers (BLOs) who allegedly collapsed under “excessive workload”, will also receive Rs 1 lakh each, she said.
The opposition BJP, however, rejected the state’s claims of SIR-linked citizen deaths as “politically motivated”, and alleged that the ruling party was terrorising the BLOs.
Banerjee, after presenting her government’s 14-year development report card at the state secretariat Nabanna, said the rollout of the revision exercise on November 4 triggered “widespread fear” among ordinary citizens who believed their names could be struck off the voters’ list arbitrarily.The TMC has repeatedly accused the BJP-led Centre of using the process to strike off minority and rural votes, a charge the Commission has denied. (PTI)
