Bihar Electoral Roll Revision case: LIVE UPDATES from Supreme Court

The Supreme Court is hearing a batch of petitions challenging the Election Commission of India’s June 24 directive for a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar.

A Bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi is hearing the matter.

The petitioners have raised concerns that the SIR process permits arbitrary deletion of voters without adequate safeguards, potentially disenfranchising lakhs of citizens and undermining free and fair elections.

The Election Commission has defended its directive, asserting that it is empowered to undertake such an exercise and that the revision is crucial to ensure that only eligible citizens are included in the electoral rolls ahead of the upcoming Bihar Assembly elections.

One of the issues that the Court is considering has been the list of documents that may be accepted by the Election Commission to verify the identity of voters to retain their names in the electoral list.

On July 10, the top court had urged the Election Commission to consider Aadhaar, ration card and electoral photo identity card (EPIC card) as admissible documents for this verification exercise.

The Commission, however, later submitted an affidavit stating that neither Aadhaar cards nor ration cards can be treated as proof of eligibility to vote.

The petitioners have challenged the exclusion of these documents as absurd.

More recently, the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), which is a petitioner, filed an interim application urging the Court to direct the ECI to disclose details of 65 lakh names dropped from a draft Bihar electoral roll published on August 1 as part of the SIR.

On August 14, the Court asked the ECI to upload online this list of 65 lakh voters proposed to be deleted from the electoral roll and disclose reasons for such proposed deletion.

On August 22, the Court added that people excluded from the draft electoral roll can submit Aadhaar card along with the requisite form to object to their exclusion.

Live updates from the hearing today feature here.