Receiving a notice during Delhi’s ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) does not mean a voter’s name will be deleted from the electoral roll, the city’s election body said on Monday amid a political row over the exercise.
The clarification comes after the Aam Aadmi Party raised questions over the SIR process. Bharadwaj also questioned why rules concerning voters who had shifted residences had not been applied to Chief Minister Rekha Gupta and ministers Kapil Mishra, Ashish Sood and other BJP leaders. He alleged that many voters had been affected after being marked as shifted. These include Union and state Cabinet Ministers, Ministers of State, Governors, Lieutenant Governors and Speakers, among others. The provision allows such office-holders to be treated as ordinarily resident in the constituency where they would otherwise have lived but for holding that office.
Because their details could not be mapped to the previous SIR records, election officials have said Kejriwal and his family are on the draft electoral roll and were issued notices. Because they are away in connection with their official duties, under Section 20 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, an MP or MLA does not cease to be ordinarily resident in the constituency where they were registered at the time of election merely. The CEO also said that, under Election Commission instructions, public representatives, members of the judiciary, holders of declared offices and certain other prominent people whose entries had earlier been flagged were included in the draft roll so that necessary documents could be collected during the claims-and-objections period.
Section 20 also contains provisions for holders of certain offices declared by the President.
AAP Delhi chief Saurabh Bharadwaj questioned how former Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and members of his family could remain “unmapped”, arguing that if a former Chief Minister faced such problems, ordinary voters with less time and fewer resources could find the process even more difficult.
