|
New Delhi: If one Muslim woman is
allowed not to have her photograph on the voters' list, thousands of
similar applications would be filed, the Supreme Court noted Monday
and aked the petitioner to instead think of some workable solution
to resolve the tangle.
A bench of Chief Justice K.G.
Balakrishnan, Justice Deepak Verma and Justice B.S. Chauhan made the
observation while hearing a lawsuit by Madurai resident Ajmal Khan,
resenting the display of the photographs of Muslim women in the
voters' list.
The bench discarded Khan's counsel
P.S. Narsimhan's plea to give liberty to at least those Muslim women
who do not want their photographs on the voters' list to approach
the Election Commission and seek the privilege.
"If we give such privilege to one
candidate, it will apply to lakhs of other voters," said the bench.
"If this order is passed by this court, thousands of applications
are likely to be filed."
The bench instead asked the petitioner
and his counsel to give some "workable suggestion" to resolve the
tangle and adjurned the hearing of the matter.
Appearing for the Election Commission
of India, counsel Meenakshi Arora sought to allay the petitioner's
fear and said that the poll panel has already taken steps to ensure
that the voters' list with the voter's pictures on it are not
misused.
She said the poll panel rules provide
that election agents of various political parties are to be given
only hard copies of the voters' list and in case they need the soft
electronic copies of electoral rolls, then such copies have to be
given without photographs on them.
This would prevent misuse of the
voters' list with pictures, Arora said.
But the petitioners counsel was not
convinced and he insisted that electoral rolls with the photographs
of Muslim women must not be given to any poll agent in any form.
"We are not against election officials
having access to voters' list with the photographs of Muslim women,
but the same should not be given to the public at large," said
Narsimhan.
He insisted that giving the
photographs of Muslim women to poll agents would be akin to
releasing their photographs to the public at large and that would
mitigate against their religious edicts.
"The religious custom and holy
preaching of Holy Quran lay down that Muslim women should wear 'purdah'
and 'burqua' and should show their faces only to their husbands and
close relatives," Khan said in his petition.
Khan had approached the apex court,
challenging a Madras High Court ruling that had dismissed his
similar plea and questioning the Election Commission of India's move
to have photographs of voters in the electoral rolls.
Khan sought to clarify that his
community is not averse to having Electoral Photo Identity Cards
(EPIC) for Muslim women, but having their pictures printed on a
public document was anathema to Islam.
|
'Judiciary in India seemingly working beyond its constitutional
limits':
“Of late, some judgments
pronounced by various courts
Muslim appeasement is a myth: Prof. Oommen: 
Government committed to overhaul
education infrastructure: Patil: 
'Inter-faith dialogue necessary amidst clash of civilisation debate': 
Bureaucrats in Gujarat working like BJP workers, says Ahmad Patel: 
Comment on this article