CITIZENSHIP: NOT TERMINATED IF INELIGIBLE FOR ELECTORAL ROLLS

By Anshika Khera

EC says , Aadhar card, Ration card and voter ID will not be included for revision of Bihar rolls. Supreme court advised for the inclusion of Adhar , Voter ID, ration card as proofs for Special Intensive intensive Revision (SIR) but Election commission denied and said that nowadays issuance of ration cards are not solely genuine and Adhar seeding also helps so they will not be included as proofs for SIR.

White EC rejects the advice of Supreme court, it also says that it is the constitutional authority to check if a elector fills the requirements of citizenship but the elector’s citizenship will not be terminated if he is ineligible as an elector.

On July 10 , the Supreme Court, while hearing the petitions , stating concerns over SIR in poll-bound Bihar , declined to restrain EC to from continuing with SIR but suggested the inclusion of Adhar,Voter ID,ration card as proofs of rolls and also said that EC can submit counter-affidavit by July 21 and the next hearing on this matter would be on July 28.

In its counter-affidavit, EC said that Aadhaar is not considered as a proof of citizenship and it is not listed among 11 documents in enumeration form as it doesn’t help in presenting the eligibility under article 326 and this has also been held by various high courts. However , Aadhaar can be used in place of other documents to prove eligibility. EC presented a press release issued by government on March 7 stating that Centre had removed over 5 crore fake ration card holders.

When EC recieved the petitions arguing that it was Central Government’s power to determine the citizenship, it responded by saying that it is within its powers to decide the proofs for inclusion in electoral rolls.

The EC’s enumeration form comes with the electors’ EPIC number printed with an optional Aadhar column . The EC also said that the Electoral registration officers could consider all documents presented by electors.