On Wednesday, the Supreme Court sought a reply from the Election Commission (EC) on a petition challenging the deletion of lakhs of names from voter lists in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana by the poll panel in 2015. A bench headed by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud said the plea has raised an important issue, which has to be decided.
Srinivas Kodali, a Hyderabad resident has filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) stating that the algorithm used by the EC is not transparent or public. Challenging the Telangana High Court order dismissing his PIL, the petitioner says that the deletion of 27 lakh voters in Telangana state and 19 lakh voters in Andhra Pradesh state is a violation of the procedure established by the law.
Initially, the petitioner filed the PIL in the Telangana High Court saying that millions of unsuspecting voters would be unable to vote during the then-upcoming state elections in December 2018. The High Court had dismissed the PIL, saying it did not find any reason to grant the reliefs sought in the PIL.
“EC’s impugned actions to purify electoral rolls – using an automated process; from data received from Aadhaar and state governments; and without proper notice or consent from voters- is a blatant infringement on the right to vote. Likewise, the petitioner has said in the plea that the EC’s actions to permit electronic linkages between EPIC data, Aadhaar, and SRDH is an unconstitutional invasion of voter privacy and the right against voter profiling,” the petitioner has said in the plea.
Responding to the allegations, the EC had told the High Court that the said software is a database maintenance system for “purification” of electoral rolls. “It does not delete voters on its own and there is no algorithm in the software which can be used as intelligence for taking a decision by itself. EROs (Electoral Registration Officers) are empowered under Section 22 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 and under Rule 21A of the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 to carry out deletions and corrections of names from/in the electoral rolls,” the EC had clarified.
