New Delhi: The Supreme Court (SC) on Wednesday sought a response from the Election Commission on a plea challenging the deletion of lakhs of names from the voters’ lists in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and said that it is an “important issue”.
A bench led by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud said that the plea raised an important issue, which it has to decide. Srinivas Kodali filed the plea through the advocate on record N Sai Vinod. The petitioner has challenged the Telangana High Court order which dismissed his public interest litigation.
Srinivas Kodali is a Hyderabad resident, technology researcher, and graduate of IIT Madras. In the Public Interest Litigation, the petitioner has challenged the action of the first respondent EC in employing software stating that the algorithm of which is neither transparent nor public in the matter of preparation of voter lists in India, especially in the States of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, which has led to the deletion of 27 lakh voters in the State of Telangana and 19 lakh voters in the State of Andhra Pradesh in violation of the procedure established by law.
In an effort to ‘purify’ electoral rolls, the Election Commission of India (ECI) in 2015, suo motu deleted 46 lakh entries from the electoral rolls in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana; linked Electors Photo
Identity Card (‘EPIC’) with Unique Identification (‘UID’) or Aadhaar; seeded EPIC data with the State Resident Data Hub (SRDH), and allowed the state governments to access and copy EPIC data.
“While the EPIC-Aadhaar linking was carried out under the National Electoral Rolls Purification and Authentication Programme (‘NERPAP’), the rest were carried out without specific policy, guidelines, or authorization in any form,” the petition read.
The Petitioner filed the PIL in the High Court apprehending that millions of unsuspecting voters would be unable to vote during the then-upcoming state elections in December 2018. Regrettably, during the pendency, a large number of voters in Hyderabad found their names deleted from the electoral rolls on the day of the elections.
Later, the High Court dismissed the PIL.
“ECI’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 ECI’s actions to permit electronic linkages between EPIC data, Aadhaar, and SRDH is an unconstitutional invasion on voter privacy and the right against voter profiling,” the petitioner said.
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Despite these glaring violations, the High Court accepted the ECI’s counter affidavit without demur and dismissed the PIL, the petitioner told the Supreme Court.
The voting rights of millions of voters in two states were deprived without due process and egregiously, the ECI’s decision to create electronic linkages between voter ID and other government-owned databases has exposed voters to be profiled, targeted, and manipulated by entities with access to the data, the petitioner said.
“ECI’s actions, therefore, threaten the sanctity and integrity of elections,” the petitioner said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by HW News staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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