The Supreme Court on Thursday said that the Election Commission of India (ECI) is aware about its responsibility to disclose the voter data on completion of the recently-concluded Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Bihar..A Bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymlaya Bagchi was hearing a batch of petitions including one by NGO Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) challenging the Bihar SIR."They [ECI] know their responsibility and after doing addition and deletion, they are bound to publish it and the matter is not closed," Justice Kant said after the petitioner sought publication of lists of deleted and added voters. .BackgroundIt was earlier informed that 65 lakh names were dropped from the 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. Last week, the Court 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..Hearing today .Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for the petitioners, today submitted that the ECI should separately publish the list of deleted voters and added voters. "Elections are imminent now and this Court can't do much to change the list but at least the list and deletions should be published," he submitted. Senior Advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, appearing for the ECI, submitted that a court direction was not required and the data would be published."Till tomorrow is the time, how can you say we will not put out?," Dwivedi said. Justice Kant said the final list of each constituency has to be with each political party and the polling agent as well. It also noted that ECI was willing to publish the relevant lists.The matter will be heard next on November 4..[Read Live Coverage].Follow Bar and Bench channel on WhatsAppDownload the Bar and Bench Mobile app for instant access to the latest legal news.
