Ten Opposition parties from Assam on Monday jointly moved the Supreme Court challenging the delimitation exercise undertaken by the Election Commission of India as being unconstitutional and arbitrary.
The petition also challenges Section 8A of the Representation of People Act, 1950 — based on which the ECI claims to be exercising its power in conducting the delimitation process — on the ground that it’s arbitrary and opaque besides being discriminatory to Assam and the northeastern states.
It was pointed out that delimitation for the rest of the country has been conducted by a high-powered bodyheaded by a retired Supreme Court judge. However, theprovision of Section 8A discriminates against Assam and the northeastern states for which the Election Commission has been prescribed as the authority to conduct delimitation.
The petition also referred to some statements of Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma who publicly said that the current exercise would be beneficial to the BJP while being damaging to other Opposition parties.
Such statements, the petitioners submitted, do not inspire any confidence in the ECI exercise and give rise to apprehensions that it has been heavily dictated by the state government.
The petitioners have also assailed the ECI’s decision to readjust the extent of 126 Assembly and 14 Lok Sabha constituencies in Assam by its draft order issued on June 20.
The petitioners are Lurinjyoti Gogoi (Assam Jatiya Parishad), Debabrata Saikia (INC); Rokibul Hussain (INC), Akhil Gogoi (Raijor Dal), Manoranjan Talukdar (CPI(M)), Ghanakanta Chutia (Trinamul Congress), Munin Mahanta (CPI), Diganta Konwar (Anchalik Gana Morcha), Mahendra Bhuyan (Nationalist Congress Party), and Swarna Hazarika (Rashtriya Janata Dal).
The petition filed through advocate-on-record Fuzail Ahmad Ayyubi has assailed the methodology adopted by the ECI by taking different average Assembly sizes for different districts and argues that the population density or the lack of same has no role to play in the process of delimitation.
