Petitions seek investigation into thousands of 'fake' objection pleas during SIR, Gujarat High Court issues notice

Ahmedabad: The Gujarat high court has issued notices to the election commission, state government and other agencies on two separate petitions seeking investigation into "conspiracy to delete genuine" voters from the electoral list.

The petitions have sought investigation by the Special Investigation Team. They have claimed that as part of a "larger conspiracy" thousands of illegal objection applications under form-7 were filed seeking deletion of voters' names during the recently concluded Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in the state.

Justice Hemant Prachchhak issued notice on Friday while posting the matter for further hearing on July 7.

Form 7, a highly controversial provision, is used to object to the inclusion of an individual’s name in the electoral roll. According to the rules, the person filing the objection must be a voter in the same constituency, and the burden of proof lies with the objector. However, in these cases, such criteria were not followed.

One petition has been filed by Mehdihasan Saiyedmehmood Naqvi, a resident of Kodinar in Gir Somnath district. Naqvi is the president of Kodinar City Congress committee.

"Most shockingly, there has been a blatant and large-scale misuse of Form No-7, whereby a massive number of objections have been filed seeking deletion of names of genuine voters from the electoral roll, particularly targeting voters belonging to the Muslim community across the State including Kodinar Constituency," the petition claims.

The petitioner reportedly found that around 47 individuals had "illegally, maliciously and sinisterly filed as many as 6722 applications, seeking deletion of thousands of genuine voters including the name of the present petitioner."

The other petition has been moved jointly by Chandanji Talaji Thakor, Abdul Hamid Nurmuhammed Moknojiya and Abdulrehman Chotubhai Rangrej. They have also alleged that an "enormous number of objections have been filed" targeting "Muslim community across various constituencies in the state of Gujarat, including Sidhpur constituency.

One of the petitioner Thakor is a former Congress MLA from Sidhpur while Maknojiya is the president of SidhpurTaluka committee while Rangrej is a businessman and vice-president of Jamiat Ulama-e-Hindi. Objections were filed against Ragrej. The petitioners' names were included after objections were turned out to be illegal and fake.

During their inquiries into such objection applications, they found that thousands of applications were filed in bulk as part of a "sinister intention." They found that one Bharatji Thakor alone had filed about 140 applications. The petitioners also found that one Dipsangji Thakor had filed Form-7 against Rangrej and when he was contacted, he told the petitioner he didn't personally know him.

The petitioners brought such alleged illegalities to the authorities and sought to file police complaints but were refused, forcing them to approach the high court. They have argued that such objections were filed on oath and therefore such matters should be investigated with seriousness.