Appellate tribunal accepts Aadhaar card in first SIR appeal

Kolkata: "Motab Shaikh and Motab Herul are the same person," the appellate tribunal ruled on April 5 in its first SIR appeal, accepting the Congress Farakka candidate's Aadhaar card as proof of identity after the Election Commission provided no reason for his exclusion.Retired judge TS Sivagnanam, while adjudicating Motab's appeal, said the tribunal sought the specific reasons recorded by the judicial officer for exclusion of Motab's name. The EC, however, failed to provide any, citing "technical reasons".In an earlier proceeding regarding SIR in West Bengal in Supreme Court, Justice Joymalya Bagchi pointed out that the software includes a specific column designed to record the "reason" for every voter's inclusion or exclusion.Justice Bagchi had said: "The architecture of the software provides a field for remarks, where the officers concerned must provide reasons when deciding whether a logical discrepancy justifies deletion or warrants inclusion."Senior advocate Dama Seshadri Naidu, representing EC, had assured the bench that the entire digital record would be made available to the appellate tribunal.The dispute stemmed from discrepancies between Motab's name as on the 2002 voters' list and the first list after SIR on Dec 16 last year.The tribunal examined the entire record placed before the AERO, where Motab's Aadhaar card proved crucial. While Aadhaar is not a document proving citizenship, it serves as a document of identity. In fact, following the SC judgment in the Bihar SIR case on Sept 8, 2025, Aadhaar was included by EC as a "supporting" document.Applying that logic to Motab's appeal, the tribunal said his Aadhaar reflects his name as Motab Shaikh. "This would be sufficient to accept the case of the appellant," it said.The tribunal also took note of his passport (issued in 2018) and driving licence (issued in 2001), both of which identified him as Motab Shaikh, son of Ejabul Shaikh.The tribunal also considered the affidavit he filed for correction after his name was recorded as ‘Motab Herul' instead of ‘Motab Shaikh' following the 2002 SIR.Furthermore, he produced the birth certificates of his four children; on the certificate of the eldest, born in 1993, his name was recorded as ‘Motab Shaikh'. Interestingly, all six of Motab's siblings had cleared the SIR process, with their names appearing on the poll rolls, while Motab's was the only one excluded.