Karnataka High Court notice on plea against SEC’s action of conducting parallel SIR in Mahadevapura assembly constituency

Justice Suraj Govindaraj passed the order on a petition filed by Vivek M. and four others, all registered electors in wards under the Mahadevapura constituency.

The SEC, on June 19, had ordered the SIR in 23 wards under the Bengaluru North City Corporation and one ward (Kasavanahalli) under the Bengaluru South City Corporation after prima facie noticing irregularities in the electoral rolls of the Mahadevapura Assembly constituency, as these wards fall under the constituency.

AICC secretary’s plaint

The SEC had acted on a complaint lodged by Mansoor Ali Khan, Secretary, All India Congress Committee (AICC), on May 21, seeking verification of the voter list for the Mahadevapura Assembly constituency. He had alleged that the voter list contained around 13,000 duplicate voters, 40,000 fake or invalid addresses, 4,000 invalid or unverifiable photographs, and 33,000 instances of misuse of Form-6.

The petitioners have contended that the SEC’s action creates a direct conflict with the SIR being conducted by the ECI, which had frozen the electoral rolls of all Assembly constituencies on June 16.

Despite the ECI conducting a centralised SIR, the SEC, just three days later, ordered a separate SIR with a different freeze date for the electoral rolls and a compressed schedule for completion of the SIR in these wards, with the publication of the final rolls slated for July 31.

‘Lacks jurisdiction’

The petition contends that the SEC lacks the jurisdiction to conduct such an independent SIR, as its role under the Constitution of India is limited to adopting the Assembly electoral rolls prepared by the ECI and not independently revising them.

The petitioners have claimed that the provisions of the GBA Act, if interpreted as granting the SEC the power to conduct a separate SIR of the electoral rolls of an Assembly constituency, would be violative of the constitutional provisions.

The petitioners have pointed out that the parallel exercise is wasteful expenditure of public resources and confusion among voters while pointing out that SEC decision, sans consulting ECI, would ultimately lead to two conflicting electoral rolls for the same electorate while undermining the constitutional guarantee of a single, unified electoral roll under Articles 325 and 326 of the Constitution.