Panaji: The draft electoral roll prepared during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) cannot be used as the basis to delete voters’ names, the Bombay High Court has said.
The Goa bench of the High Court also questioned the Election Commission of India (ECI) over the process of deleting names without giving voters a hearing, saying it was “very perturbed by this”.
A division bench of Justice Amit S Jamsandekar and Justice Valmiki Menezes was hearing a petition filed by six members of a family whose names were deleted from the voter list.
The petitioners, Paresh Salgaonkar and his family members, said they had shifted to a new house within the same Santa Cruz Assembly constituency. They were asked by the Booth Level Officer (BLO) to submit Form 8 to change their address.
However, while processing their applications, officials reportedly found that there was no record of their Electors Photo Identity Cards (EPICs) in the system. As a result, the only option available on the Election Commission’s ERONET software was “reject”, the petitioners said.
ERONET, or Electoral Registration Officers’ Network, is a web-based system used by the ECI for processing forms and managing electoral rolls.
Salgaonkar told the court that the Assistant Electoral Registration Officer informed him that the EPICs of the family members had already been deleted from the electoral rolls. Their Form 8 applications could therefore not be processed.
The petitioners said they were then told to submit Form 6, which is meant for people seeking fresh inclusion in the electoral roll.
They argued that this was not applicable to them as they were already registered voters and only wanted to change their address within the same constituency. For that, they were required to use Form 8.
The High Court said the draft roll cannot be the basis for deleting voters’ names.
“Otherwise, Form 6, 7 or 8 have no meaning. Form 6, 7 and 8 are specifically for either a person who is a new voter, a person who has lost the right to vote, or a person who is shifting,” the court said.
The bench also questioned the ECI over the role of its software in the process.
The court pointed out that the system had rejected the Form 8 application even though the petitioner was an existing voter.
“The court told the ECI that the software “system did not allow” it to accept Form-8. “He was never a new voter. He was an existing voter. He became new for your system,” the court said.”
The judges also questioned the ECI about the legal provisions that allow voter names to be deleted without a hearing.
“Show us from the Act…what empowers you to delete without hearing?… Your officers were helpless, and they just decided to throw it on the system. So, they recorded it in the order, saying that the system has rejected. We are very perturbed by this…we are just wondering how many more who have not come to court.”
The bench said that whenever a Form 8 application is received, the concerned authority must examine whether the voter has actually shifted residence.
The court said the issue could affect a much larger number of voters if similar cases occurred across the state.
“Here there is only one family. Take a situation where there are so many people who have shifted residence,” the bench said.