NEW DELHI, FEB 13: The Supreme court has refused to stay an Election Commission decision to exclude 3.68 lakh voters from the electoral rolls in Assam on the grounds that their citizenship was either disputed or doubtful.A division bench of Justices S P Bharucha and V N Khare turned down the plea for stay in the petition moved by the Jamait-ulema-e-Hind against the Commission's decision to treat the cases of these voters as ``doubtful''.
Senior counsel for the Commission Kapil Sibal and Lalit Bhasin told the court that the voters excluded from the rolls had been given sufficient opportunity to be heard but they could not produce any documentation like electoral roll extracts or even land pattas to prove their citizenship thus forcing the Election Commission to take the decision to exclude them.
Sibal submitted that the Commission had undertaken the exercise by due verification process on a set of guidelines.
``The Commission has in fact included a large number of such voters in the list and hadexcluded only a small number who had failed to produce any kind of documentary evidence when the burden was on them to prove their citizenship,'' Sibal contended.
Earlier, on February 7, the Supreme Court had issued notices to the EC, the Union and the State on a public interest petition alleging ``arbitrary'' deletion of 3.70 lakh voters from the final electoral rolls in Assam. Appearing for the petitioners, senior counsel R K Jain told the court that the State's electoral officers had carried out an ``unwarranted exercise'' by deleting these names.
Meanwhile, the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) today claimed responsibility for the attaclk on the Assam Minister.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
