During the hearing of the petitions challenging the validity of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) being conducted by the Election Commission of India across several states, the Supreme Court on Wednesday (26th November) questioned whether intruders holding Aadhaar Cards should be given voting rights.
Hearing the final arguments, a bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi asserted that the Aadhaar Card is not conclusive proof of citizenship. It clarified that the Aadhaar Card is created to ensure that the benefits of social welfare schemes reach everyone and does not automatically confer voting rights. “Aadhaar card is the creation of a statute (and valid) to the extent that it acknowledges the benefits or privileges based upon it. Nobody can dispute that. After all, an Aadhaar card is prepared for a particular object and a particular statute. There can’t be any dispute on that,” the bench remarked.
Just because someone has an Aadhaar, should he be made a voter?: SC
“Aadhaar is a creation of statute for availing benefits. Just because a person was granted Aadhaar for ration, should he be made a voter also? Suppose someone belongs to a neighbouring country and works as a labourer,” CJI Kant said. “Suppose there are persons who intrude from a different country, from neighbouring countries they come to India, they are working in India, staying in India, somebody working as a poor rickshaw-puller, somebody working as a labourer on a construction site, if you issue an Aadhaar card to him so that he can avail benefit of subsidised ration or for any benefit, that’s something part of our constitutional ethos, that is our constitutional morality. But does it mean that because he has been given this benefit, he must now be made a voter also?” he questioned.
The Election Commission is not post office: SC
The Supreme Court also rejected the argument that the Election Commission must function like a post office and therefore must accept every Form 6 submitted to it. The Court said that the poll body has the jurisdiction to determine the authenticity of the documents accompanying Form 6.
Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for the petitioners, alleged that the SIR exercise, which updates voter rolls, places an unconstitutional burden on ordinary voters, most of whom are illiterate. “Filling up the forms is not the responsibility of the elector. So many are illiterate and do not know how to read and write. If they cannot fill forms, they will be ousted (from electoral rolls),” Sibal claimed. He urged the Apex Court to focus on constitutional safeguards rather than procedural justifications. Sibal added that once a voter’s name is included in the voter list, the presumption of validity follows unless the state proves otherwise.
“There is a presumption. A self-declaration, I am a citizen. I live here. There is an Aadhaar card that I have. That’s my residence. You want to take it away, take it away through a process. And that process must be established before Your Lordship,” the Senior Advocate said, arguing against the shifting of the burden of proving identity on citizens.
Explaining why the voter list needs regular updation, Justice Bagchi said, “It all depends on the political gradient. One political party, which is stronger, takes all the dead voters and they are voted in. We don’t judge in a vacuum. That is why the dead voters need to be weeded out. Therefore, it is not party A or party B… If the power gradient is for party A, all the dead voters will vote for party A”. He acknowledged that a survey might have errors, and this is the reason that draft rolls are released before the final voter list.
