A Division Bench of the Kerala High Court on Thursday directed the State Election Commission (SEC) to conduct the ensuing local body polls based on the voter list prepared for the 2019 Lok Sabha election.
The Bench comprising Chief Justice S. Manikumar and Justice Shaji P. Chali issued the directive while quashing the SEC’s order to conduct the civic polls based on the voters list prepared for the 2015 local body elections.
The decision has come under fire from the Congress and other Opposition parties.
The Bench passed the verdict while allowing appeals filed by Congress leader N. Venugopal and Indian Union of Muslim League (IUML) Nadapuram Mandalam president Soopy Narikkatteri against a single judge’s judgment upholding the decision of SEC. The single judge had upheld the decision while dismissing their pleas against the decision.
The SEC has directed the election officers to prepare the electoral roll of all local bodies treating the roll prepared for the 2015 local body elections as draft electoral rolls.
The SEC took the stand that an electoral roll revision using the 2019 electoral roll will be a huge task. According to it, if the 2019 electoral roll was used, door-to-door visits will have to be carried out to prepare a ward-based roll. Besides being a time-consuming affair, huge expenses would have to be incurred for the exercise.
The petitioners pointed out that the electoral rolls were renewed for the Assembly election of 2016 and finally for the 2019 Lok Sabha election. If the 2015 electoral rolls were taken as draft rolls, it would inconvenience a large number of voters as they would have to again enrol their names in the list. In fact, more than 90% of voters now in the electoral rolls prepared for the Lok Sabha election would have to undertake the exercise of registration afresh. This was because persons who had enrolled themselves in the 2019 electoral roll would not be in the 2015 voters list.