NEW DELHI: Election Commission told on Tuesday Supreme Court that citizenship verification during the SIR of voter rolls was intended only to ensure the removal of non-citizens from voter rolls and did not extend to citizenship termination or deportation. EC, through senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, told a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi that Article 326 of the Constitution provides that only Indian citizens have the right to be included in the electoral rolls.For this purpose and for this purpose alone, EC had the right to inquire and come to a conclusion as to whether a person was a citizen of India, which gave him the right to be a voter. “If the commission finds that a person is not an Indian citizen, his name will either not be included in the voters’ list or if it is there, it will be deleted,” he said.Dwivedi said no person who has even the slightest doubt about citizenship can be included in the voters’ list. However, such a determination by the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) would not automatically result in a declaration that he/she is not an Indian citizen – which was within the jurisdiction of the relevant authorities. “The ERO’s conclusion that a voter’s citizenship is doubtful and the resulting removal of his name from the voters’ list can only be overturned by a court if it finds that the procedure used to make such a determination was perverse and illegal,” he said.“Under the SIR exercise, a person’s citizenship in terms of the Citizenship Act, 1955 shall not be terminated by reason of the fact that he/she ceases to be eligible for registration in the electoral rolls,” EC said.Since the documents that could be used to establish citizenship are within a person’s knowledge, the burden of proof falls on the individual, it said.Dwivedi said if doubts arose about the citizenship of an elected representative, the President or the Governor would be constitutionally bound by the EC’s opinion on whether the MP or MLA was disqualified for being a non-citizen. This means that the commission has the power to examine the citizenship of MPs or MLAs in case of doubt, he said.Arguments on this matter will continue on Thursday.
