ECI: SC settled electoral roll issue, Congress demand untenable

Sources within the Election Commission of India (ECI) have clarified that the Indian National Congress' (INC) ongoing demand for machine-readable, digital copies of electoral rolls is 'not legally tenable' and has already been conclusively settled by the Supreme Court.

Officials pointed out that this issue was earlier raised by former Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee President Kamal Nath in 2018 through written petition (C) No. 935 of 2018. The Supreme Court had definitively ruled in favour of the Election Commission’s position in that case.

While acknowledging that the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, has been demanding digital electoral rolls for the past seven months, ECI sources said that this is part of a Congress strategy spanning over eight years. They added that this fact “appears to have been selectively obscured in the present representation.”

The sources said that although Rahul Gandhi’s demand is consistent with the Congress party’s historical position, it cannot be accommodated within the current legal framework. The matter has already been legally settled through a Supreme Court judgment in the case of Kamal Nath vs. Election Commission of India.

Rahul Gandhi “may not have been appropriately apprised of the finality with which the matter stands concluded in judicial record,” they said.