CHENNAI: The Election Commission of India (ECI) has informed the Madras High Court that blood relatives of prisoners (except convicts) can submit the forms for Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.
This submission was made by counsel for ECI before the first division bench of Chief Justice Manindra Mohan Shrivastava and Justice G Arul Murugan when a public interest litigation petition filed by K R Raja, an advocate of Madurai, seeking a direction to the ECI to conduct SIR enumeration exercise inside the prisons in the state came up for hearing on Monday.
The bench directed the ECI to file an affidavit in this regard, and adjourned the hearing by two weeks.
The petitioner stated that there are 12 borstal schools, two men special sub jails, two women special sub jails, three open air prisons, nine central prisons, five special prisons for women, 14 district jails and 104 sub jails in the state currently, accommodating about 6,000 convicted prisoners, 2,079 undertrials and 10,474 remand prisoners.
He said a significant number of these prisoners belonged to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, minority, migrant, and economically deprived sections and were already vulnerable to political disenfranchisement.
Stating that there was no integration between the prison management system and the ECI’s digital systems, the petitioner noted that these prisoners were likely to lose their voting rights if they cannot furnish the enumeration forms.
He prayed for the court to issue orders to the ECI to hold the SIR exercise in prisons by deputing BLOs.
Advocate Alagumani appeared for the petitioner.