The plea by one Naulak Khamsuanthang and others was mentioned before a bench headed by Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud and comprising Justice J.B. Pardiwala and Justice Manoj Misra, who refused an urgent listing of the matter.
Photo: IANS
A plea has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking the protection of voting rights of about 18,000 Manipur residents – mostly Kuki-Zo-Hmar IDPs – who have been displaced due to the ethnic violence in the north eastern state.
The plea by one Naulak Khamsuanthang and others was mentioned before a bench headed by Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud and comprising Justice J.B. Pardiwala and Justice Manoj Misra, who refused an urgent listing of the matter.
The petitioner has stated that several thousand residents of Manipur fled their homes in the wake of months long ethnic violence and are now living in other States in the country. The petition has alleged that no arrangements have been made to ensure that such Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) cast their votes in the general elections.
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“For these internally displaced persons (IDPs), no arrangement has been made for them to vote in the forthcoming Lok Sabha Elections 2024. Hence approximately 18,000 persons have been denied the right to vote … In the absence of such voting facility to the IDPs, many tribal voters are not able to exercise their franchise, not because they do not want to vote but because they have been denied the opportunity to Vote,” says the plea.
The petition drawn by advocates Hetvi Patel and Kaoliangpou Kamei and filed through advocate Satya Mitra says, “Most of the IDPs scattered outside of Manipur are making symbiotic living in at-least 6 districts within the state of Mizoram, Delhi and NCR, and hundreds of IDPs are earning their living by doing odd jobs in Mumbai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Guwahati, Shillong, Kohima and Hyderabad”.
The petition says that the Election Commission of India (ECI) has turned a blind eye towards the state of tens of thousands of Kuki-Zo-Hmar IDPs who are going to be disenfranchised without any arrangements for the exercise of their voting rights.
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