Supreme Court tells Election Commission to act on bulk Form 7 complaints in UP voter-roll revision

The Supreme Court on Friday asked the Election Commission to examine complaints that applications to delete voters' names were filed in bulk during the special intensive revision (SIR) of Uttar Pradesh's electoral rolls, make any necessary corrections and report back to the court.

The Commission told the bench that it had found such bulk applications, but that they were false and had not been acted upon, according to LiveLaw and PTI.

What the court heard

Form 7 is the application used to object to a name on the draft electoral roll and seek its deletion. The petitions before the court, filed by Congress Lok Sabha MP Tanuj Punia and Samajwadi Party leader Arvind Kumar Singh, challenge the conduct of the revision in Uttar Pradesh.

A bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice V Mohana heard the matter. Counsel for an applicant told the court that 32 Form 7 applications had been submitted in a single constituency to target members of one community, and that two of them had been signed by booth-level officers, LiveLaw reported. Counsel said similar complaints had arisen in Karnataka and Telangana, where a chief electoral officer had ordered police cases over bulk Form 7 filings. These figures are the petitioners' claims and were not tested in court.

Senior advocate Dama Seshadri Naidu, appearing for the Commission, said: "They were false, and we have not acted upon them," according to PTI.

The bench then directed that the Commission "examine the factual aspects", take corrective steps and file a compliance report. It asked the petitioners to give a note listing the irregularities they say remain unresolved, PTI reported. No date for the next hearing was reported.

Kerala and Chhattisgarh

The same bench also took up challenges to the revision in other states. On Kerala, Mr Naidu said the process was over, and the court recorded that the SIR there was complete. It asked the petitioner to give details of people who had been unable to submit their enumeration forms, and said the Commission should consider these sympathetically and report to the court. The Chief Justice said correcting the roll was a continuing process; the court did not extend any deadline, LiveLaw reported.

In the Chhattisgarh case, in which notice was issued in December, the court gave the Commission four weeks to file its counter-affidavit after senior advocate Raju Ramachandran, for the petitioners, said none had yet been filed.

Background

The Election Commission has been carrying out special intensive revisions of electoral rolls in several states, under which voters must submit enumeration forms to stay on the roll. Opposition parties have accused the Commission of using the exercise to remove eligible voters; the Commission says the revision is meant to clean the rolls of dead, shifted and duplicate entries. INDIA bloc parties have called a rally in Delhi on Sunday against the SIR and have demanded the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. The BJP has called the protest a sign of frustration.

Uttar Pradesh is due to hold Assembly elections in 2027.