Panjim: The Goa bench of Bombay High Court has ordered the Election Commission of India (ECI) to restore the names of Paresh Salgaonkar and five of his family members to the electoral roll within 10 days after verifying their addresses.
The Salgaonkar family’s names were omitted from the electoral rolls despite submitting Form 8 applications to update their residential addresses during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise.
“We allow the petition and order the restoration of the names within ten days,” a division bench of justices Valmiki Menezes and Amit Jamsandekar said on Thursday. The verdict had been reserved on October 13.
The bench rejected the ECI’s plea to stay the order to enable it to approach the Supreme Court.
The high court clarified that the matter was distinct from the broader legal issues surrounding the SIR which are currently being heard by the apex court.
A resident of the Santa Cruz constituency in north Goa, Salgaonkar had approached the high court complaining that their names were omitted from the draft roll even though they had submitted Form 8 following instructions from their local Booth Level Officer (BLO).
However, their names were missing when the draft electoral roll was published.
The family then received automated notifications informing them that their Form 8 applications had been rejected by the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO), after the deadline for filing claims and objections had passed.
Salgaonkar also refused to fill Form 6, saying that doing so would amount to filing a false declaration since he was neither a first-time voter nor shifted to another constituency.