Challenge to Bihar, West Bengal, TN SIR: LIVE UPDATES from Supreme Court

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

The Court is also hearing a batch of fresh petitions challenging the extension of SIR to other States including Tamil Nadu and West Bengal.

While SIR in Tamil Nadu has been challenged by DMK party, the exercise in West Bengal has been assailed by the State unit of Congress party.

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

The petitioners in the Bihar SIR case 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 ECI has defended SIR 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.

It was earlier informed that 65 lakh names were dropped from the Bihar draft electoral roll published on August 1. On August 14, the Court directed the ECI to upload the list of these 65 lakh voters proposed to be deleted during the SIR.

On August 22, the Court ordered that people excluded from the draft electoral roll can use their Aadhaar cards as ID proof to get themselves included in the voters' list. Before this, the ECI had stated that it would only accept any of eleven other ID documents for this purpose. 

Later, the Court directed the ECI to issue a formal notice stating that Aadhaar will be accepted as an identity proof document for the inclusion of a voter to the revised voters' list being prepared as part of the SIR.

The SIR was completed on September 30. As against 7.89 crore voters on June 24 in Bihar, 7.42 crore electors were retained in the voter list. 

The number of deletions also came down from 65 lakh to 47 lakh.

The Court then declined to pass any blanket order on the exclusions and inclusions in the voters list. Instead, it asked the affected individuals to file appeals to the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of the State.

During the hearing of the matter on October 16, the Court said that the ECI is aware about its responsibility to disclose the voter data on completion of the SIR.

Senior Advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, appearing for the ECI, submitted that a court direction was not required and the data would be published.

Live updates from today's hearing here.