Kochi: Amidst Congress-led Opposition accusing BJP-led NDA of vote theft and demanding resignation of the CEC, fortywo retired judges have supported the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.
In an open letter to the “people of India”, the former Supreme Court judges and former chief justices and judges of various High Courts said they had no brief for any political party but felt compelled to speak as “silence is no longer a neutral choice”.
The signatories include former Jammu and Kashmir and Delhi High Court Chief Justice B C Patel, former Karnataka High Court Chief Justice Subhro Kamal Mukherjee and former Supreme Court judges Hemant Gupta and Pankaj Mittal.
The former judges lamented that constitutional institutions were facing a “sustained attack”, with the ECI at the centre of the campaign.
According to the letter, the criticism had gone beyond democratic scrutiny and appeared to be a “calculated campaign” driven by political interests, with potentially damaging consequences for India’s democratic institutions, the New Indian Express reported.
“Criticism of institutions is a democratic right. Denigration is not,” they said, objecting to constitutional authorities being publicly labelled “thieves”, “puppets” and “compromised”.
They said electoral law empowered the ECI to revise electoral rolls and noted that such exercises had been conducted repeatedly since the first general elections.
42 retired judges back SIR
