Pick best procedure to prune electoral rolls, HC tells EC

The Madras High Court has suggested to the Election Commission to choose the best procedure for pruning electoral rolls by removing the names of the deceased from the rolls.

The first bench of Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy gave the suggestion on July 13, disposing of a writ petition that sought to quash the final voter list released by authorities on January 20 this year and direct it to update it by removing double entries and names of deceased people.

The petitioner, N Shylappa Kalyan however, restricted his plea in respect of removal of the names of dead alone.

He suggested that the Aadhaar details of the deceased should be entered in every death certificate so that the EC could verify it.

The bench said that it is for Parliament to consider such a measure or for the EC to consider how best to prepare the electoral rolls and ensure the sanctity and purity thereof.

There is no doubt that the petitioner's suggestions will be considered by it in trying to ensure that only such persons who are alive and are entitled to vote to find their names in the electoral rolls and others do not.

It disposed of the petition after granting liberty to the EC to choose the best procedure for maintaining the purity of electoral rolls.