The Supreme Court of India on Friday expressed surprise over political parties’ inaction for the correction of names of excluded voters from the draft electoral rolls in Bihar, urging them to issue specific directions to their workers to assist people in filing forms.
The Supreme Court said that all 12 political parties in Bihar shall issue specific directions to party workers to assist people in filing and submitting the requisite forms with any 11 documents in Form 6 or an Aadhaar Card.
Supreme Court’s Response Comes Over ECI’s Submission That No Political Parties Submit Claims
The apex court took note of ECI’s submission that 85,000 new voters have come forward in SIR of Bihar, and only two objections have been filed by booth-level agents of political parties.
The Supreme Court said individual persons, at their own or with the assistance of BLAs (booth-level agents), are entitled to apply online, and it is not necessary to apply in a physical form.
The Election Commission of India has published the first draft of electoral rolls and asked political parties and individuals to submit claims and objections between Aug 1 and Aug 30.
Only CPI (ML) Liberation Filed Two Claims
On Friday, the poll body said that only the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) (Liberation) has filed two claims to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls in Bihar.
However, over 1,60,813 Booth Level Agents (BLAs) across national and state parties can file objections or claims to the draft roll prepared after the enumeration forms were collected as part of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise.
BLAs appointed by Political parties can collect Claims (Form 6) from the public & Objections (Form 7) from the public & file objections himself/herself along with the prescribed declaration. As per the bulletin, the Bharatiya Janata Party has the most BLAs (53,338), followed by the Rashtriya Janata Dal (47,506) and the Janata Dal United (36,550).
ECI has also received 2,63,257 Form 6s
The ECI has also received 2,63,257 Form 6s, which pertain to the registration of new electors after they are 18 years of age.
The Opposition parties have repeatedly been criticising the Bihar SIR, calling the revision unconstitutional and alleging that voter list manipulation might happen to favour a particular political party.
