No question of Aadhaar being used to claim citizenship: Supreme Court | India News
The order came from a bench of CJI Surya Kant and Justices Jayamalya Bagchi and Vipul M Pancholi when the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court told the SC that although 294 serving and retired District Judges and Additional District Judges have been given SIR work, it will take at least 80 days to verify their documents if the cases of every 502 lakh voters are decided.The bench allowed the Calcutta High Court chief justice to draft state judicial officers with three years of experience for SIR work and said that if more additional hands are needed to complete the work expeditiously, he can request similarly experienced judicial officers from neighboring Jharkhand and Odisha.Significantly, the SC said the EC will release the final voter list on February 28 with the names of all those verified. However, the EC will release the supplementary voter list after February 28 as the process of verifying the documents of 50 lakh voters along with the claims is taking some time.The SC said that the 11 documents notified by the EC, as well as the admit card of Class 10 examination along with the marksheet, will be considered valid for claiming inclusion in the electoral roll, again clarifying that Aadhaar will be used only for identification purposes.“There is no question of using Aadhaar to claim citizenship,” the SC said, adding that only voters who have submitted their documents by February 14 will be scrutinized by judicial officials while determining their claim for inclusion in the electoral roll.Invoking its extraordinary powers under Article 142, the CJI-led bench said the supplementary voter lists will be deemed to be part of the final list published on February 28. The SC asked the EC to bear the accommodation and honorarium expenses of the judicial officers from Jharkhand and Odisha.Advocate Ashwini Upadhyay told the SC that most of the illegal immigrants have Aadhaar cards which are generated in WB. He said SC may issue a direction to control and regulate these fake Aadhaar cards.The CJI said that this may require a deeper investigation, but this is not the time to do so. Justice Bagchi said the best course of action is for Upadhyay to make a representation to SG Tushar Mehta, who can forward it to the central government for appropriate action.
