The hearing, organised by civil society groups, followed a door-to-door audit across four polling booths. Organisers said the audit found that 416 of the 1,236 voters verified had been wrongly marked as absent, shifted, dead or duplicate. Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi attended the hearing, where residents sought help in restoring their names.
On Wednesday, the bench asked the ECI to publish a list of voters it had been unable to contact, along with details of their previous polling locations, and make the process for restoring their names to the rolls widely known. “You see how to reduce this gap of 43 lakh. We will take up after two weeks,” CJI Surya Kant said.
“One suggestion, please publish the list telling that you are the 43 lakh persons who were earlier shown in so and so… that we have not been able to contact you, please see that you are able to contact us,” he said, adding that voters should be asked to approach their nearest booth-level officer (BLO) and fill Form 8.
The court also asked the poll panel to continue accepting Forms 6 and 8, issue public notices clarifying that there was no cutoff date at this stage for approaching the authorities, and encourage affected voters to come forward.
The ECI told the bench it would consider accepting late enumeration forms and extend the 30 October deadline, if required.
The observations came during a hearing on a petition filed by activists Anjali Bhardwaj and Amrita Johri, who sought a direction to the ECI to make public the list of electors issued notices during the SIR in Delhi, along with the specific reasons for each notice.
Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for the petitioners, said around 47 lakh voters had been omitted from Delhiโs draft electoral rolls, which covered approximately 1.45 crore electors before the SIR.
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