Hyderabad: The Telangana high court on Monday sought Election Commission of India’s (ECI) response to a plea challenging notices issued to two voters based on automated data-matching through ECINet and ERONet during the recent Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise. During the hearing, senior counsel L Ravichander, representing the petitioners — city-based social worker S Q Masood and his businessman brother Syed Waheed Uddin — referred to remarks by Supreme Court judge Justice Ujjal Bhuyan at NALSAR on Sunday on voting rights and the risk of mass disenfranchisement.He alleged that the names of electors were being deleted without proper notice or over insufficient documents after notices were served.A bench of Justices P Sam Koshy and Narsao Rao Nandikonda, hearing the petition, asked ECI counsel to obtain instructions and inform the court of its stand.On Oct 1, the petitioners approached the high court challenging EC’s use of ECINet/ERONet to flag voters over minor discrepancies. They alleged that notices issued through the automated system lacked statutory authority, physical verification and due application of mind, and violated constitutional rights and electoral laws. The petitioners also questioned the alleged lack of public disclosure on how the platforms function and how discrepancies in SIR enumeration forms are flagged.“The challenge was not limited to individual notices, but to the broader methodology adopted during SIR,” alleged Ravichander. He argued that automated matching was being relied upon without adequate verification of physical records, proper application of mind by electoral registration officers, or transparency in the platform’s functioning.The petitioners’ counsel also said there was no clear mechanism for voters to submit further explanations after documents were collected during hearings.ECI counsel, meanwhile, submitted that “Masood was issued a notice after a mismatch was found in his father’s name between current and previous electoral rolls.”The bench asked ECI what action followed after Masood appeared for the hearing on Sept 15 and submitted documents.
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