'You will include these two documents. Wherever you find forgery, that's on case-to-case basis.'

The Supreme Court today (July 28) asked the Election Commission to include Aadhaar and voter identity cards as part of its controversial ‘special intensive revision’ of electoral rolls in Bihar. The court, however, did not pass an order in the case to stop the poll body from publishing its draft list.

On July 10, the apex court asked the poll body to consider accepting the Aadhaar card, voter ID card and ration cards for its rolls revision exercise in Bihar. A partial-working-days bench of Justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and Joymalya Bagchi had also questioned its authority to seek proof of citizenship. In response, the Election Commission told the Supreme Court that it has the authority to seek proof of citizenship and also turned down its suggestion that Aadhaar, voter identity and ration cards be considered as valid documents.

In today’s hearing, senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan noted for the Association for Democratic Reforms that on the ground, the Election Commission is not accepting Aadhaar, ration or voter ID cards.

LiveLaw has quoted Justice Surya Kant, who was on the bench along with Justice Bagchi, as having then said, “It seems their stand is that list of documents is not exhaustive…these documents will also be accepted, following this Court’s advice.”

He then asked the Election Commission to include both the Aadhaar and the EPIC cards.

When senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi said that the EPIC card “can’t be conclusive,” Justice Bagchi noted, “According to your notification, none of these documents are conclusive. They are documents to accompany the enumeration form.”

Justice Kant followed up with the comment that there is “presumption of correctness,” before adding: “You proceed with these two documents.”

“You will include these two documents. Wherever you find forgery, that’s on case-to-case basis. Any document on the earth can be forged,” LiveLaw quoted Justice Kant as having said.

The court declared that “mass inclusion, not en masse exclusion” must be the goal of the exercise in the poll-bound state.

Sankaranarayanan asked the court to stop the Election Commission from publishing the draft rolls on August 1, but Justice Kant noted that it was, after all, a draft list and said that the court can ultimately strike down the entire process if any illegalities were found.

The court also asked from the counsels of the petitioners how long it would take for each of them to present arguments, noting that it will see when it “can spare time” after looking at this schedule.

Justice Kant said that tomorrow the court will fix date for subsequent hearings.

More than 10 petitions are being heard at the apex court. The Association for Democratic Reforms, the NGO, is the lead petitioner. Most other petitioners are opposition leaders including Rashtriya Janata Dal MP Manoj Jha, Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra, Congress leader K.C. Venugopal, Nationalist Congress Party (Sharad Pawar) leader Supriya Sule, Communist Party of India leader D. Raja, Samajwadi Party leader Harinder Singh Malik, Shiv Sena (Uddhav Bal Thackeray) leader Arvind Sawant, Jharkhand Mukti Morcha leader Sarfraz Ahmed and Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Liberation leader Dipankar Bhattacharya.