The Supreme Court on Friday sought responses from the West Bengal government and the Election Commission to a public interest litigation (PIL) which alleged that the state government was denying benefits of social welfare schemes, including ration, to people whose names were deleted from the voter list because of doubtful citizenship during the special intensive revision (SIR).
Acting on a PIL by Prasenjit Bose, chairperson of the West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee and convener of the Joint Forum against the national Register of Citizens (NRC), a bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana said the Election Commission (EC) had the constitutional power to delete a person’s name from the voter list if his or her citizenship was doubtful.
“But the EC cannot determine whether a person is a citizen of India or not. While dealing with SIR in Bihar and West Bengal, we had repeatedly said that the EC is not the authority to decide a person’s citizenship status,” the bench said.
“We had told the EC to forward the list of people with doubtful citizenship credentials to the Union government, which is the competent authority to determine citizenship of a person,” the bench said.
Appearing for the petitioner, senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan said that as many as 33 lakh people have filed appeals against the EC decision to delete their names from the voter list. Appellate tribunals have so far disposed of 30,000 appeals, of which 70 per cent were allowed, which means that their names have to be included in the voter list, he said.
Also read: ECI extends SIR schedule in Delhi, enumeration to end on Aug 8
Follow us
