Petitioners trying to derail Bihar SIR through false claims: 10 highlights from ECI's affidavit in Supreme Court

The Election Commission of India (ECI) has filed an affidavit before the Supreme Court in which it has accused petitioners, who have challenged the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar, as having made incorrect and false claims in an attempt to derail the process.

The matter was briefly heard today by a Bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi, when the ECI's counsel, Senior Advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, accused the petitioners of trying to mislead the Court.

Similar submissions have been made in the ECI's latest reply before the top court as well.

Highlights from the ECI's claims in its affidavit include the following.

1. The petitioners are trying to “derail and disrupt” the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise in Bihar.

2. The petitioners’ affidavits contain incorrect and false statements. Their real objective is to prevent the SIR from being conducted in other States.

3. The ECI also addressed a claim made in a recent hearing by political activist and psephologist, Yogendra Yadav, that the electoral list prepared amid the SIR process has led to widespread exclusion of voters. The ECI has argued that Yadav relied on newspaper articles and self-made charts that were not part of his affidavit. The ECI termed Yadav's submissions the product of a distorted use of small data sets.

4. The affidavit added that population projections from the 2011 Census were wrongly used by the petitioners to make their submissions. The poll body has contended that such data cannot be used for adjudging the accuracy of the final electoral roll.

5. On the allegation of disproportionate exclusion of Muslims, the ECI said the petitioners' approach on this issue was communal and should be deprecated. The ECI added that its database does not capture any information on religion.

6. The Commission has also given some details about the reasons for deletions from the earlier electoral roll. It is stated that 7.89 crore voters were on the earlier roll. Of this, 7.24 crore voters submitted enumeration forms during SIR, while 65 lakh did not. Of the 65 lakh who did not submit the forms, 22 lakhs were deceased, 36 lakh voters had permanently shifted, and 7 lakh voters were enrolled elsewhere.

7. It added that 3.66 lakh deletions from the voters' list were made after notices, hearings, and speaking orders by election officials. No appeals have been filed so far.

8. The ECI also addressed Yogendra Yadav's recent claim that the voters' list prepared during SIR contained 45,000 gibberish names, among other errors. The ECI has said the errors arose only in Hindi translations through software and that English entries were accurate and verified by Booth Level Officers. Due to software translation issues, the names in local languages are not reflected properly in the printed copy, but this discrepancy has no impact on the eligibility of an elector, the affidavit said.

9. Referring to Yadav's claim that over 4 lakh voters' houses were recorded as having the number "0", the ECI has replied that these were “notional house numbers." The affidavit says that voters themselves give house details and temporary numbers are assigned where no house numbers have been allotted, to keep families together on the rolls. No new marking was done during the SIR 2025.

10. The Commission has asserted that the SIR 2025 has achieved its objective of purification of electoral rolls that the final roll was notified on September 30, 2025.

Therefore, the ECI has also contended that all petitions against the SIR stand rendered infructuous.