Telangana HC declines to rule on published post-revision electoral rolls

The Telangana High Court clarified on Thursday that under Article 226 of the Constitution of India, a court cannot examine the validity of the revised electoral roll, a Deccan Chronicle (DC) report said. The court said that all those not satisfied with the final publication of the electoral rolls have remedies either under Section 22 or 23 of the Representation of People Act to seek amendment, transposition or deletion of any entry.

A division bench of Chief Justice Alok Aradhe and Justice NV Shravan Kumar looked into the matter. The judges examined the petition filed by Mohammed Feroz Khan, Congress leader from the Nampally constituency. In his petition, the Congress leader stated that the revised electoral list for the Nampally constituency, which was published on October 4, contained discrepancies. The petition said that the list had names of bogus voters, those who had moved away or had died. He said that the names of at least 113,310 voters had to be deleted from the rolls, the DC report said.

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Khan's representative in the court said that his client had lost the 2018 elections by a very low margin due to bogus voters in the electoral rolls. He argued that if the same is not taken care of, it would damage the prospects of Khan's victory again.

Senior standing counsel for the Election Commission of India (ECI), Avinash Desai told the court that the chief electoral officer (CEO) was aware of the issues and has already started revising electoral rolls. He added that the ECI had published draft electoral rolls on August 21 and had called for objections, if any, from all concerned parties. He argued that the final list was published only after considering all the claims and objections, the DC report stated.