The Government Senior Secondary School for Boys in Nangloi where a teacher was stabbed by students. Express photo by Oinam Anand. 29 November 2016The Election Commission (EC) has written to Delhi Chief Secretary Vijay Dev, reiterating its order to stop the state government’s drive to collect voter identification details of families of school students.
As first reported by The Indian Express on December 1, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, in a letter sent to the then Chief Election Commissioner O P Rawat, had objected to poll panel’s order and also instructed the Directorate of Education (DoE) to not to follow the directive.
Calling the EC’s order “illegal”, Sisodia, in his missive, had told Rawat that the Commission does not have the jurisdiction or authority to interfere in the DoE’s work, particularly when elections have not been announced in the state.
“When it comes to electoral data, EC has permanent jurisdiction. Hence, last week, we wrote to the chief secretary instead ordering him to withdraw the DoE circular with immediate effect,” said an EC official who did not wish to be identified.
In a data collection drive that started in September, the Delhi government had asked all schools, public and private, to compile comprehensive data of all students, their guardians and siblings, with their mobile numbers, voter ID details, and educational qualifications. The exercise, Sisodia had said, was meant to determine how many students enrolled in Delhi’s schools actually live in the city.
A revised circular issued by the DoE on October 8 states that the collection process will “facilitate in creating a databank of students of Delhi to verify the residential address, and its analysis will serve various purposes of the department like short- and long-term planning”.
The move snowballed into a controversy, with the Opposition and social organisations calling it a “breach of privacy”. The matter is now in the Delhi High Court. The EC objected to the exercise once it was brought to its notice through complaints.
Though the EC and the Aam Aadmi Party have locked horns on several issues over the last two years, this is the first time when the party, as the executive, has refused to carry out the EC’s directions.
On Tuesday, the Delhi High Court had also pulled up the Delhi government over its failure to disclose the reason for asking for self-attested copies of voter ID cards and phone numbers of students studying in city schools and of their family members.
A bench of Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Anup Jairam Bhambhani pulled up the Delhi government after its education department issued a fresh circular on November 27, asking heads of schools to digitise the data of students within 15 days. The bench asked the government to explain its stand by December 18.
The plea, moved by the Government School Teachers’ Association, has sought to restrain the Delhi government from collecting and entering it in a digitised format till the pendency of a plea challenging the DoE’s October 8 circular.
