A plea filed by a group of advocates seeking the Supreme Court’s intervention over INDIA bloc leaders entering the Court’s filing counter amid their protest against the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls was mentioned before the Chief Justice of India Surya Kant-led Bench on Tuesday.
Senior Advocate and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Gaurav Bhatia mentioned the petition before a Bench comprising CJI Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V. Mohana, describing the incident on the Supreme Court premises as a “sad incident”.
“Permission, may I mention a petition that has been filed by advocates regarding the sad incident that happened within the precincts of the Supreme Court?” Bhatia submitted.
However, the Bench declined to take up the matter immediately and asked him to mention it on Wednesday after the cases listed for the day were taken up. When Justice Bagchi asked whether the petition was on the cause list, Bhatia said he had only just received its diary number.
“You may mention it tomorrow, after the list,” Justice Bagchi said.
The petition arises from Monday’s developments, when INDIA bloc leaders, including Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi and Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, marched towards the Supreme Court to challenge alleged irregularities in the SIR exercise. The demonstration took place amid police barricades that prevented the leaders from proceeding further towards the Court.
Subsequently, Gandhi, Kharge and nine other opposition leaders moved the Supreme Court challenging the electoral roll revision exercise and alleging irregularities in the deletion of voters’ names. Their petition seeks, among other reliefs, an independent audit of voter deletions and disclosure of records concerning the Election Commission of India’s decisions on the SIR.
The controversy follows the opposition’s efforts to secure judicial intervention against the electoral roll revision process, which it has questioned on grounds of alleged procedural irregularities and the potential exclusion of eligible voters.
The Supreme Court is scheduled to consider the broader legal challenge concerning the SIR exercise. Bhatia’s request to mention the advocates’ petition has been deferred to Wednesday, with no substantive directions issued on it during Tuesday’s proceedings.
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