New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday asked the Election Commission to consider accepting Aadhaar, voter ID card and ration card as valid documents for its special intensive amendment (SIR) of the electoral rolls in Bihar and allowed the process to go. Although the court flagged off practical difficulty in completing the work within a shorterline, as it was bound by the state elections, the EC assured that 60% of the work had already been done.Given that the EC itself admitted that the list of 11 approved documents was not a complete, a bench of Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia and Jomalya Bagchi said that it is prima facie to the approach that the Commission should consider Aadhaar and other two documents as well. It said that Aadhaar was already considered a relevant identity document for electoral rolls. The court, however, clarified twice that it was not a direction, but a suggestion for the EC that could be abandoned, but for which the panel had to give the reason.Initially, the court was in favor of stopping the EC from publishing the draft role, which is scheduled for August 1, but was avoided by the Commission after strongly opposed it. Subsequently, the court posted a hearing on July 28 to take stock of the situation before the publication of the draft role.The bench stated that in its order it was the priority of the opinion that there were three questions that were required to be investigated – the power of the EC to conduct the process; The process of using power; And the timeline that was very short as Bihar elections is going to be held in November. The court made two-and-a-gentle arguments with senior advocates Gopal Shankaranarayanan, Kapil Sibal, M Singhvi and Shadan Farit, which challenged the validity of the EC’s decision. High-day legal duality saw the pole panel to justify the decision with senior advocates Rakesh Dwivedi and Maninder Singh with former Attorney General KK Venugopal. During the hearing, SC said that when the EC was discharging its constitutional duties and was not doubting the efforts and honesty of the Commission, there was an issue of perception and practical difficulties that were to be investigated. The question asked why this process started so late and why it was associated with the Bihar assembly election which is going to be held in November. Dwivedi said that being a constitutional body like the judiciary, the EC could not respond to the perception, but there was no illegality only on the law. “If you ask me, I will not be able to present those documents. You are talking about the law but I am talking about practicality,” said Justice Dhulia. Dwivedi further said that the EC could not intend to remove people from the list and a prefabricated mentality was being a misconception against practice.But the bench asked why the EC suddenly decided and why it was related to the Nov election. “We appreciate the practice you have done. Nobody disputes. But with such a large population, is it possible to link exercise to the upcoming election … Trying to remove the suspicion of the court, Dwivedi said that the practice was going on in full swing, and 60% of the work had already been done. He said that political parties were also helping in practice. He successfully prepared the court to list the case before publication of draft rolls to not pass any interim order and take stock of the situation. The court issued a notice to the EC on the batch of petitions filed by the opposition parties – Congress, NCP (SP), CPI, CPM, CPI (ML), DMK, Samajwadi Party, Shiv Sena (UBT), JMM, RJD and TMC. In addition, Yogendra Yadav, NGO Association for Democratic Reforms and People’s Union for Civil Liberty, and some residents of Bihar have also filed petitions against the decision of the poll panel.
