The Supreme Court identified 14 procedural defects in a petition filed jointly by Rahul Gandhi and a number of other Opposition figures contesting what they described as irregularities in the voting process and in the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls.
Among the discrepancies flagged by the court was an underpayment of Rs 220 in court fees. Among the remaining objections are missing authorisation documents from nine of the petitioners, along with a photocopy of Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge's identity card that has been deemed too poor in quality to be acceptable.
The legal filing reached the court at a time when large numbers of demonstrators had assembled in central Delhi and were making their way toward the Supreme Court building, citing concerns about electoral conduct linked to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.
Leaders of the INDIA bloc took part in a protest march while their legal representatives filed a court petition naming the head of the election commission, alleging that ballots had been tampered with in what the group called "vote chori."
Paperwork deficiencies flagged by the Supreme Court registry included absent vakalatnamas — the written authorisations allowing legal representation — along with a request for a clearer copy of Kharge's identity card and complaints about text rendered in fonts too small to read comfortably. Among the documentation concerns raised were the absence of colour versions of two records, alongside passages rendered in regional languages, text that proved difficult to read, pages that appeared to be missing, and numbering that did not run consistently throughout.
Among the other signatories to the petition are Trinamool Congress MP Saugata Roy, Akhilesh Yadav, Tejashwi Prasad Yadav, Sanjay Raut of Shiv Sena (UBT), D Raja, Jharkhand Mukti Morcha's Mahua Majhi, MA Baby, and ET Mohammed Basheer, who leads the Indian Union Muslim League — all joining Gandhi and Kharge in lending their names to the filing.
Named as respondents in the petition are the Election Commission of India, along with its three sitting members — Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and fellow commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi.
Filing parties are required to address the procedural shortcomings flagged by the court before the case can be scheduled for a Supreme Court hearing.
Ten distinct remedies tied to the SIR exercise, along with several other Election Commission rulings, are laid out within the petition. The ten demands put forward by INDIA bloc leaders cover a range of requested remedies — from compelling disclosure of all documentation tied to the SIR and examining whether decisions made during that exercise hold up under constitutional scrutiny, to holding accountable any officials found to bear responsibility, addressing the petitioners' stated grievances, and commissioning a review by an independent body.
