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Now, RJD, Moitra & PUCL move Supreme Court

Now, RJD, Moitra & PUCL move Supreme Court

Time of India17 hours ago
After the Association for Democratic Reforms, multiple petition filed by different parties, including NGO People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), TMC MP
Mahua Moitra
and
RJD
, have approached Supreme Court against
Election Commission
's special intensive revision (SIR) of Bihar's electoral rolls and told the court that the exercise is illegal and calculated to disenfranchise the state's mobile migrant population which works across India but returns home to exercise their democratic right to vote.
The parties are likely to mention the case before SC on Monday for urgent hearing.
Moitra, in her petition, submitted that the impugned order unlawfully shifted the burden of proving eligibility from the State to the individual elector and arbitrarily excludes commonly accepted identity documents such as Aadhaar and ration cards. Shifting of the burden of voter authentication onto the citizens, and to view every citizen with suspicion until proven otherwise, is a breach of the constitutional spirit, and also is in direct contravention of the statutory scheme to which EC is bound, she said.
PUCL, which moved SC through advocate Talha Abdul Rahman, submitted that the timing of the decision appears "deliberately to disenfranchise Bihar's mobile workforce during crucial electoral periods".
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"In the monsoon season, with massive migration and widespread documentation issues, this is an exclusionary and non-inclusive process," he said, highlighting voters' struggles in rural areas like Seemanchal and Nalanda. The Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) estimates that nearly three crore voters, particularly from Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SC/ST) and migrant communities, may lack the required documents. Mr Jha dismissed the ECI's claim of transparency, calling its dialogue with Opposition parties a "monologue." He questioned the feasibility of the 25-day timeline, noting that the last such revision took 8-11 months. "With only four-five volunteers per booth, has the ECI checked their backgrounds? In elections where margins are 4,000-5,000 votes, even a few deletions can change the outcome," Mr Jha said, and recalled unresolved issues with postal ballots in the Bihar elections in 2020. 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