The Uttar Pradesh State Election Commission (SEC) has said voter lists for the municipal election will be made available only in the Devanagari script.
State Election Commissioner S.K. Agarwal gave the clarification in response to an application by a Lucknow-based activist to print the voter lists and the ballot papers in Urdu also, the second official language of the State.
Mr. Agarwal said that under Rule 5 of the U.P. Municipal Corporation Act, voter lists would be made in Devanagari. “The Commission will follow what the Legislature has put down in the Act. If any interpretation is to be done, it will be by the Legislature,” Mr. Agarwal said.
Abdul Naseer Nasir, an Urdu language activist and convener of the Dr. A.P.J Abdul Kalam Trust, had written to the panel demanding that candidates be allowed to file their nominations and applications in Urdu. “Along with Hindi, candidate names on the ballot paper should be written in Urdu also,” said the application, a copy of which was submitted to Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Sunday.
Court judgment
Mr. Nasir made his demand on the basis of a Supreme Court judgment upholding Urdu as the second official language of the State and a subsequent Government Order.
A Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court upheld Urdu as the State’s “second official language” on September 4, 2014. The court passed the judgment on a petition by the U.P. Hindi Sahitya Sammelan against the 1989 amendment to the Uttar Pradesh Official Language Act, 1951.
On April 21, 2015, the U.P. government issued a GO instructing officials to accept representations, documents and applications in Urdu and respond in it too, and warned that there should be “no laxity” in following the order.
Mr. Nasir said officials were not taking the GO seriously. He said the nomination filed by Awdesh Dwivedi, contesting the local polls from ward 27 in Lucknow, was rejected as it was in Urdu. Candidates, however, can file their nominations in Urdu in the Lok Sabha and the Assembly elections and the ballot papers are also available in the language.
Mr. Agarwal said there was nothing the commission could do about it as it had the “compulsion” to follow the rules. “This issue was raised in the 2012 Assembly election as well as the 2015 panchayat polls in U.P.,” he told journalists.
