The petition was filed by Paresh Salgaonkar and relatives after their names vanished from the electoral roll when they moved within the Santa Cruz assembly constituency. They had submitted Form 8 to update their address, but ERONET flagged the EPICs as missing, forcing the assistant electoral registration officer to declare the entries deleted.
The division bench, led by Justice Amit S Jamsandekar, held that the draft roll cannot be the sole basis for deletion. "Form 6, 7, 8 are for new voters, those who have lost the right to vote or are shifting," the court said, insisting that a human mind must examine each Form 8 before a name is struck.
When asked about the ECI’s power to delete without a hearing, the judges were emphatic. "Show us from the Act…what empowers you to delete without hearing? … We are very perturbed by this," Justice Valmiki Menezes remarked, highlighting the lack of statutory backing for such unilateral actions.
The ruling could ripple across the state. The bench warned that if the system continues to delete names en masse, thousands of voters who have simply changed residences could lose their cards. "Once a Form 8 is received, the authority must apply its mind and see whether this person has really moved," the court directed.
The Election Commission is now expected to revise its deletion protocol and submit a compliance plan to the court by the end of June. Failure to do so could trigger a larger judicial review of the ECI’s roll‑management procedures.