The Supreme Court on Wednesday advanced the hearing in the Delhi Special Intensive Revision (SIR) matter from October 30 to October 28 after being informed that voters whose names were deleted from the electoral rolls during the revision exercise were being asked to submit Form 6 for their re-inclusion.

A Bench comprising Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi advanced the hearing after Advocate Prashant Bhushan mentioned an application filed by transparency activists Anjali Bhardwaj and Amrita Johri in the pending case challenging the Delhi SIR exercise.

Bhushan submitted that Form 6 contains a declaration stating that the applicant has never previously voted. He argued that requiring voters whose names were deleted from the electoral rolls to submit the form could force them to make a false declaration, potentially exposing them to imprisonment.

“They are asking people to fill up Form 6. But Form 6 has a declaration that they have never voted before. If they give false declaration, they are liable to imprisonment,” Bhushan submitted.

He urged the Court to direct the Election Commission of India (ECI) to allow such voters to submit Form 8, which is used for shifted voters, or introduce another form to facilitate the restoration of their names on the electoral rolls.

Bhushan initially requested that the matter be listed on Friday. When he pointed out that advancing the hearing to October 28 might not make much difference, as October 30 is the last date for correcting deletions, the CJI said, “We are thinking of passing an order that will take care of [all this].”

The Bench ultimately advanced the hearing in the main matter to October 28.

The main petition, filed by Bhardwaj and Johri, alleges that the ECI and the Delhi Chief Electoral Officer have failed to adequately disclose the names of voters who were issued notices during the SIR exercise and the specific reasons for issuing those notices.

The petition also seeks disclosure of the criteria, definitions, algorithmic parameters and operational guidelines used to classify voters under the category of “Logical Discrepancies”.

Recently, the Supreme Court had told the ECI that notices issued to voters during the Delhi SIR exercise appeared to have been issued “almost mechanically”. The Court had also sought clarification on the basis for identifying a “logical discrepancy”.