While hearing a matter regarding the validity of the family register for panchayat electoral roll entries, the Uttarakhand High Court recently questioned whether an Additional District Magistrate can “effectively control” an executive position after he admitted he wasn’t proficient in English.
As per an order dated July 18, the division bench of Chief Justice G Narender and Justice Alok Mahra questioned the ADM, Vivek Rai, when he responded in Hindi. He was asked if he knew English, and Rai said that though he can comprehend the language while being spoken to, he cannot speak it.
Taking a note of this, the order says the court directed the State Election Commissioner and the Chief Secretary to examine if an officer of the cadre of Additional District Magistrate, “who claims to have no knowledge of English or in his own words inability to convey in English, would be in a position to effectively control an Executive post”.
Rai is a senior Provincial Civil Service officer who has served as SDM of various areas before taking on the post of the ADM Nainital earlier this year.
The court was hearing the matter regarding electoral roll preparations.
It asked the assistant electoral registration officer whether an exercise had been carried out to authenticate the veracity of the entries of the family register, or whether any documents had been collected to ascertain the veracity of the claims made with the booth level officer during the enumeration programme. The officers stated that, apart from relying on the family register, there is no other material.
The court said that the legislature has not considered the family register as a document that can be relied upon by the Electoral Registration Officer to finalise the electoral roll of each constituency.
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“Despite this, the glaring fact which stares at us is the consistent submission of the learned counsel for the State Election Commission and the officers, i.e. the ERO and the AERO, that the only document that has been relied upon to include names of voters is the Family Register maintained under the U.P. Panchayat Raj (Maintenance of Family Registers) Rules, 1970,” it said, adding that if the sanctity of the family register as a valid document was of such a high degree, the legislature would have referred to it in the Uttar Pradesh (Registration of Electors) Rules, 1994, which came about after the 1970 rules.
The court said that if this is being adopted for the preparation of the electoral rolls across the state, the legality of the exercise becomes “questionable”. The court directed the State Election Commissioner and the Chief Secretary to appear virtually on July 28 to look into the issue.
