Supreme Court Refuses to Interfere with Election Commission's Decision on Base Year for SIR in Sikkim

The Supreme Court has refused to interfere with the decision of the Election Commission of India to make 2002 as the base year for Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Sikkim. It also dismissed a petition by an NGO in this regard, saying that no political party has approached us so far to change the base year of the SIR from 2002 to 1993. A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V. Mohan on Monday dismissed a PIL filed by Sikkimese Moolnivasis Suraksha Sangh, an organisation, seeking a direction to the Election Commission to consider 1993 as the base year instead of 2002. The bench said, "The goalpost cannot be changed in the middle of this process. 2002 has been kept as the base year for the entire country. We will not interfere with the decision of the Election Commission." The bench said that for the ongoing SIR process, the Election Commission has kept 2002 as the base year for all the states uniformly as though the last year of the SIR petition was the same. Sikkim's NGO can be approached to create an appropriate demographic data.