'Can't have roving inquiry': Supreme Court on revision of Bihar's electoral roll

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday said it cannot have a roving inquiry in connection with the Bihar’s special intensive revision (SIR) exercise. The court felt, at least for illustrative purpose affidavits of those persons, who are aggrieved, should brought on record.

A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi said, "Somebody will have to file some affidavit before us that I am the person affected".

Giving an example, the bench said that if a voter knows that in the revised list his name is not there and at least, he can file an affidavit.

"But today when the final list is displayed, at least today I know my name is not there…we are only to find out some potential example," the bench said.

The court said there are also illegal immigrants who are living unauthorised in India and they do not want to get exposed.

"For whom we are fighting then? They do not want to come forward," the bench asked as advocate Prashant Bhushan, representing the NGO Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), said he can bring 100 affidavits regarding the deletion of names from the electoral roll and there is a systemic problem.

The bench said, "Let us have a list of 100 or 200 people, we are talking of illustratively saying that we want to file an appeal and no order has been communicated to us. At least, we have something".

Senior advocate Maninder Singh, also representing the ECI, said no deletion or addition in the electoral roll has been done without notice, and no appeal filed by anybody.

"You can pick up one constituency as a model, as a pilot project. You can give us a list of persons in this constituency who have not been served with any order though they are willing to file an appeal and they want to file their claim for inclusion," the bench told Bhushan.