PUCL files petition before SC against ECI for SIR of electoral rolls in Bihar

The People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) has filed a petition in the Supreme Court challenging "arbitrary and unlawful" action by the Election Commission of India (ECI) in directing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in the entire country.

- STATESMAN NEWS SERVICE

This action of the Commission is being enforced immediately in Bihar, months before the scheduled assembly elections.

The PUCL's constitutional challenge to the SIR is based on the argument that "the impugned SIR process represented a direct assault on India's constitutional democracy, violating the grundnorm of popular sovereignty enshrined in 'We, The People'."

"By abandoning statutory house-to-house surveys for arbitrary document-centred exclusions, creating impossible timelines, and systematically disenfranchising marginalised communities, the Election Commission has perverted the constitutional mandate, and inverted the principle of inclusion to that of exclusion," PUCL President Kavita Srivastava said while detailing submission in the petition.