Politics · India Bureau
Supreme Court to examine plea challenging Maharashtra electoral roll revision
The Supreme Court has agreed to scrutinise a petition challenging the special intensive revision of electoral rolls in Maharashtra, where millions of voters have reportedly been deleted. The court issued notices to the Centre and Election Commission of India on Monday following submissions that temporarily displaced voters were struck off as "person not found".
LSN India ·
A three-judge bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant, along with Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana, accepted the plea filed by Arun Anandagiri, a chartered accountant and journalist. Senior advocate Arvind Datar, representing the petitioner, argued that voters who temporarily relocated during redevelopment projects in Mumbai and Pune have been improperly removed from electoral rolls.
According to the petition, approximately 20 million voters out of Maharashtra's 97.9 million registered electors have been deleted from draft rolls prepared during the revision exercise. An additional 12.2 million voters have been struck off under the grounds of "logical discrepancies", the petition stated.
Datar urged the court to suspend the revision exercise in the state until the matter is adjudicated, seeking assurance that no voter whose name appeared in pre-revision lists should be excluded or deleted without proper verification. The plea raises concerns about the methodology and scale of deletions being carried out as part of the special intensive revision process.
The Election Commission of India and other respondents have been issued notices and will be required to file their responses. The court has not yet announced a date for the next hearing on the matter.