Staff Reporter / New Delhi
The full bench of Election Commission met on Saturday against the backdrop of mounting furore over reported differences within the poll panel, the functioning of ECINet and the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls.
Far from being a routine full-bench meeting, the meetings appeared largely at issuing clarifications on the controversies surrounding the Commission, including the letter written by two Election Commissioners to Cabinet Secretary T V Somanathan.
The meeting came days after The Indian Express reported that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had raised repeated objections over the functioning of the electoral-roll software and had separately approached the Cabinet Secretary over an administrative order.
The Commission ordered a review of ECINet by a committee headed by a Senior Deputy Election Commissioner and including an independent expert from an IIT/IIIT.
The developments have meanwhile triggered protests and a widening political campaign against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.
The CJP has announced plans for a nationwide agitation from Mumbai on October 2 if Kumar does not resign, while Opposition parties have stepped up efforts to coordinate their response to the ECI and the SIR controversy. The INDIA bloc is also expected to chalk out its next course of action in the coming days.
The Commission said Chief Electoral Officers had been directed to facilitate such applications and that CEOs, DEOs and EROs would immediately launch special drives to enrol such electors.
The Commission also said the declaration attached to Form 6 specifically for SIR had been upheld by the Supreme Court. Outside the SIR process, it said the forms prescribed under the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, would continue to apply.
The ECI further said that in Goa, where voters were left out of the electoral rolls, Booth Level Officers had been directed to make house-to-house visits to collect forms. Of 97 voters identified in the exercise, 81 had already filed Form 6 for inclusion.
In its post-meeting press note, the ECI also addressed the Cabinet Secretary letter, saying it was not related to any policy matter of the Commission or its IT division but concerned the functioning of an officer on deputation. The Commission maintained that the work-reallocation orders issued by the officer were not implemented and that oversight of the IT division by the Deputy Election Commissioner was never withdrawn.