India’s voter roll fight reached the Supreme Court on Thursday. A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi issued notice to the Election Commission of India and to the three commissioners named in the case, Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, on a petition filed on October 12 by Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi and 12 other INDIA bloc leaders, among them Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, Akhilesh Yadav and Tejashwi Prasad Yadav.
The petition challenges the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. It asks for an independent committee, headed by a retired Supreme Court judge and assisted by technical experts, to examine alleged irregularities and audit changes made to the rolls, for disclosure of the Commission’s files, agendas, minutes and recorded objections, for safeguards so that no genuine voter is removed without notice and a chance to respond, and for the revision to be suspended until the examination is done. The petitioners allege the exercise could delete genuine voters and that decisions were taken through a unilateral use of the Commission’s collective powers by the Chief Election Commissioner. Those are allegations; the Commission’s reply is now the next document in the case.
The bench ordered the petition tagged with related matters already pending that challenge the revision in various states. It also added a complication for the petitioners themselves, indicating it would seek an explanation from a petitioner over conduct during the October 12 opposition protest march in Delhi, and that the notice concerning that individual would be treated provisionally until the explanation is given. Reports from the hearing differed on the petitioner’s identity, and the court gave no ruling on the march itself.
The hearing was the day the October 14 briefing had calendared, and it converts a street and press campaign into a court supervised process. Thursday was the fifth straight day of protests in central Delhi against the revision, according to reporting cited in the accounts read, and the opposition’s charge of vote theft is now a pleaded case rather than a slogan. What matters next is procedural: the Commission’s reply, and whether the court orders any interim protection for voters facing deletion while the case runs. Status: notice issued, case pending, revision not suspended.