Rely on electoral roll of LS polls: Kerala HC

KOCHI: The Kerala high court on Thursday ordered the state election commission to prepare the electoral roll for local body elections this year on the basis of the electoral roll of last year’s Lok Sabha elections.
A division bench, comprising Chief Justice S Manikumar and Justice Shaji P Chaly, issued the order after considering two appeals filed by Sooppy Narikkatteri and N Venugopal.
The division bench directed that the electoral roll of Lok Sabha elections should be the basis as it has been updated on February 7 this year by adding new voters.
Through the judgment, the court has ruled against the state election commission’s decision to use the electoral roll of the local body elections of 2015 for the polls this year.
The appellants had pointed out that elections to the legislative assembly were held a year after the 2015 polls and Lok Sabha polls were held last year. The electoral roll was updated at the time of the Lok Sabha elections last year. If the local body elections this year are held by making the electoral roll of Lok Sabha elections last year as the basis, only new voters need to be added. Asking the new voters of last year’s Lok Sabha polls to register again for voting in the local body elections this year would cause unnecessary trouble to them. Many of the new voters are students and asking them to appear and participate in the verification process during the time of exams would cause undue hardships. It is not proper to put thousands of voters to trouble for the sake of convenience of a few officials of the election commission, the counsels had contended.
However, the election commission had opposed the argument and had informed the court that it is not practical to conduct local body elections on the basis of the electoral roll for Lok Sabha polls. Elections to the local bodies are held at ward-level whereas Lok Sabha elections were conduct at the polling-booth level. If the electoral roll of Lok Sabha elections is considered as the draft for local body elections, it would lead to mismatches, the election commission had submitted.
The court asked how a voter who had voted during the Lok Sabha polls last year be asked to register again for the local body elections this year when there is no dispute regarding his or her addition to the voters list. The appellants had pointed out that while the electoral roll for local body elections in 2015 had 2.52 crore voters, it had increased to 2.62 crore during the Lok Sabha elections last year. The division bench issued the order to consider the electoral roll of Lok Sabha elections last year as the draft for the electoral roll for local body elections this year after considering these submissions.