The Supreme Court, on Friday, July 18, reiterated that while the Election Commission of India (ECI) has the constitutional authority to delete names from the electoral roll if a person’s citizenship is doubtful, it has no power to determine citizenship. The top court issued notice to the Election Commission and the West Bengal government on a plea challenging the alleged use of Special Intensive Revision (SIR) data to deny welfare benefits.
A Bench comprising Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana was hearing a petition filed by Prasenjit Bose, chairperson of the SIR committee of the West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee, seeking directions to streamline the appellate process for persons excluded from electoral rolls and challenging the alleged denial of benefits under welfare schemes.
The Bench observed that the Election Commission “can’t determine whether a person is a citizen of India or not.”
“We repeatedly said EC is not the authority to decide a person’s citizenship status. We told the EC to forward the list of people with doubtful citizenship credentials to Union government, which is the competent authority to determine citizenship,” the Bench said.
Justice Bagchi reiterated that the Supreme Court had already clarified in its Bihar SIR judgment that “ECI is not a constitutional authority with regard to status under Art 9, 10, 11 and 12.” Articles 9, 10 and 11 of the Constitution deal with loss, continuance and regulation of Indian citizenship, while Article 12 defines the term "State" for the purposes of enforcing fundamental rights.
“We are conscious of this. In our Bihar SIR judgment, we made clear that ECI has a corresponding duty that as soon as there is a decision, it has to refer to the Ministry for adjudication under Citizenship Act. Unless that is done, status must go on,” Justice Bagchi said.
The court was hearing submissions by senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, appearing for the petitioner, who argued that the West Bengal government had linked deletion from the electoral roll with denial of benefits under the Public Distribution System (PDS), Annapurna Yojana and even re-verification of caste certificates.
The petition challenged government notifications issued in May and June directing deletion of beneficiaries from welfare schemes on the basis of the SIR exercise and calling for re-verification of caste certificates of persons whose names had been deleted from the electoral rolls.
Sankaranarayanan submitted that around 34 lakh appeals had been filed before 19 appellate tribunals in West Bengal, while only about 38,000 appeals had been decided so far. He pointed out that nearly 70% of the decided appeals had resulted in restoration of names to the electoral rolls.
The senior counsel argued that “those 33 and a half lakh have all these things being withdrawn from them, while their appeals are pending, where at least the track record shows 70% of the appeals have been allowed.”
He urged the court to introduce mechanisms ensuring transparency and accountability in the functioning of the appellate tribunals, including publication of standard operating procedures, regular bulletins on appeals and time-bound disposal of cases.
The petition also highlighted the absence of publicly available guidelines governing the appellate process and contended that the lack of accessible procedures disproportionately affected poor, rural and marginalised electors.
The Bench observed that speedy disposal of appeals could be raised before the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court but agreed to examine the issues relating to the alleged use of SIR data for non-electoral purposes. The matter has been posted for further hearing on August 25.