Former SC Judge Justice Nariman Warns of Voter Disenfranchisement in Bengal, Urges Supreme Court Intervention

I hope SC steps in and rectifies these things, Justice Nariman said

NEW DELHI: Ahead of a Supreme Court hearing Monday on the SIR controversy and a plea seeking suspension of the CEC for his "unilateral decisions", former SC judge Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman Sunday flagged "malfunctioning" of the poll panel and said a citizen's right to vote, which is at the heart of democracy, was in great peril because of "illegal knocking out" of people from voters' lists. Justice Nariman also highlighted the problem in the appointment process of election commissioners, which is in Centre's hands. He expressed hope SC would rise to the occasion and rectify the mistakes prevailing in the system. He said around 93% of adjudicated cases of deleted voters in West Bengal had been decided in their favour which meant they were illegally removed. TOI had first reported on September 20 that appellate tribunals had upheld deletion of only 8,649 voters out of the 1.2 lakh cases decided so far. "Now, the unfortunate part is that all this came before the court very recently. Two judges differed, and the ultimate thing is now it has gone before a bench, probably of five judges, in order to find out whether this is good law or not... But meanwhile, these appointments continue only in the hands of govt of the day. Now, we saw the danger of this happening very recently. All of you have seen that in the Bengal elections, 90 lakh voters were disenfranchised. That is an astounding figure. Ninety lakh voters getting disenfranchised did not somehow move Supreme Court enough to stay this," Justice Nariman said. Out of those who were disenfranchised, around 22 lakh filed appeals, the former SC judge said, adding, "The others must be people who don't have the wherewithal or access to justice."

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Justice Nariman pointed out that of 1 lakh appeals, almost all were decided in favour of the voters. "So, you can imagine this was completely illegal - knocking out of the common man, the citizen of India in order that a govt obtains what it wants. And in Bengal, we saw it ousted govt of the day and brought in govt of Centre. Now, these are very, very disturbing things that are happening in our country today," he said, speaking on 'The Constitution and the Common Man' at Rajkumar College, Rajkot. "I hope the apex court, the institution to which I once belonged, steps in immediately and rectifies these things. You can't have an EC which functions or malfunctions like this. So the first important red flag qua the Constitution and the common man is the appointment process of election commissioners. The sooner the constitution bench decides you have to have somebody like a PM, leader of the opposition coupled with the Chief Justice or his nominee, who then picks the best names in order to see that votes actually translate into what they were supposed to translate into happens," Justice Nariman said.

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