Senior advocate Prashant Bhushan, while making submissions on legality of the Special Intensive Revision of voter lists or SIR in the Supreme Court today, used a derogatory term for the Election Commission. SIR has been challenged from several quarters, including Trinamool Congress MP Dola Sen.
During the hearing, Bhushan questioned why the SIR exercise was undertaken in what he claimed was a "hurry".
"Why this hurry? It led to a situation that 30 BLOs committed suicide. Every BLO had to go house to house. What will happen to migrant workers?" said Bhushan, who was representing the Association of Democratic Reforms.
"You (the Election Commission) said you will not follow any norms of transparency... you will not give data of the voters, you will not give the disclosures of applications and deletion on the website," he said.
Then he added, "If you give plenary powers to the Election Commission of India, it will become a despot".
Chief Justice of India Surya Kant asked Bhushan to confine his submissions to pleading. "Let us not make any statements," said Justice Kant.
There has been an uproar over the working conditions of the BLOs (Block level officials) of the Election Commission.
Several BLOs have died after they started working for SIR, and their families have blamed work stress. On Sunday, a BLO died by suicide in Uttar Pradesh, leaving a note where he spoke of work pressure.
In Bengal and other states where voter re-verification exercises are being held, several BLOs have spoken about work pressure, poor working conditions, and low pay.
Parties like Bengal's ruling Trinamool Congress has criticised the Election Commission, saying it had started the exercise in a hurry due to vested interests.
The top court had earlier sought the Election Commission's response on a plea filed petitioners from Bengal.
The Commission, in its affidavit, has told the Supreme Court that 99 per cent of voters have been supplied with the enumeration forms, and 50 per cent of the forms have been digitised.
