Supreme Court declines blanket order in Bihar SIR; asks those excluded from voters list to file appeals

The Supreme Court on Thursday directed that Bihar State Legal Services Authority should provide thorough assistance in filing appeals to those excluded from the voters list prepared by the Election Commission of India (ECI) as part of the recently-concluded Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Bihar..A Bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymlaya Bagchi 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.The Court passed the order after noting that there were discrepancies in the affidavits submitted before the top court by certain individuals who claimed that they had been incorrectly excluded.The Bench said that it will not be possible for the court to examine each and every such case and hence, an appeal before the relevant authority is the way out."Regardless of outcome of these proceedings, one issue that has arisen is right to appeal for the 3.7 lakh who have been excluded. Though ECI has taken a stand that each such person why they have been excluded, petitioners oppose this. Since time to file appeal is running, we request the executive chairman of Bihar Legal Services Authority to send a communication to all the secretaries in local authorities to provide free legal aid counsel, para legal volunteers to help the excluded ones to file their appeals. Let each village have a list of booth level officer and the numbers of the para legal volunteers who will help in filing these appeals. The officers shall also provide facilities to draft the appeals and counsels from the panel to file such appeals. State Legal Services Authority shall collate all information and submit status report to court within one week and question of deciding appeals within the timeline shall be considered on the next date of hearing. These directions to State Legal Services Authority shall be applicable mutatis mutandis shall also be applicable to the ones excluded from the draft voter list," the Court said it in its order..BackgroundThe Court was hearing a batch of petitions including NGO Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) challenging the Bihar SIR. It 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..Hearing today .Senior Advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, appearing for ECI, disputed the veracity of the contents of affidavit submitted by one particular voter."There was an argument that there were large number of people who were there on draft rolls and names suddenly went away from the list. I have received three affidavits now. We have enquired into this. This affidavit is completely false. Please see para 1. He says I am resident of Bihar and was there on draft voter list. He was not there. He did not submit voter enumeration form. This is false. Then he gives EPIC number. This polling booth given is 52 but actual is 653. But that name is also of a lady and not him. He was not in draft roll. His name is not there at this item at all. There is some lady who is there in draft and final list also. Then affidavit says annexures attached. No such annexures. Then there is a stamp paper.. the date is of Sep 8.. that is the date when SC ordered that State legal service authority member shall aid and assist. See name of applicant also...looks like notary selling this paper again and again," Dwivedi said..He further claimed that Prashant Bhushan's NGO has let go of the claim of deletion of large number of eligible voters. "Mr. Bhushan's affidavit has dropped the story of large number of people dropped. Now they say 130 dropped and they say some are who wanted to get enrolled for first time etc. If they have grievance, they can still file appeal within 5 days," Dwivedi claimed.Dwivedi accused petitioner-NGO ADR of perjury and said that these allegations were being raised by political parties to set narrative."These political parties just wants to set narrative and no help. Now they have analysed these many muslims excluded etc. We are praying for an order where people can file an appeal in 5 days as the door will be closed then," the Senior Counsel submitted."If such an organisation is placing such things before the court where it is not in existence then they should not be heard," Senior Advocate Vijay Hansaria weighed in.The Bench then sought answers from advocate Prashant Bhushan about the discrepancies."This document was handed over yesterday. This is a responsibility when you hand over documents to the bench," Justice Bagchi said."It was given to me by a responsible person. If ECI says there is some problem the Legal Services Authority (LSA) can enquire as name and address given but that should not mean we will not be heard," Bhushan said."It is demonstrated that the facts are incorrect," Justice Bagchi said, displeased that the NGO had not carried out due diligence."This person was not found residing here at all. The LSA will willingly help. No need of directions. There are 20 other affidavits," Justice Kant said."With experience of this affidavit how do we know all 20 other is also correct?" Justice Bagchi demanded. "These are oral assertions," Bhushan said. "Everything is oral. You should have seen if Mohd Shahid's name was indeed there in draft roll or not," the Court shot back.The Bench then suggested that the way out is for the affected parties to file appeals against exclusion instead of Supreme Court passing any blanket order."Why can't all the people approaching you cannot approach the LSA? Free legal counsel can also be provided. We can direct Secretary of DLSA to look into this. See nothing wrong in giving affidavits. Others can also. But we also need to give ECI time to verify this," Justice Kant said.Bhushan contended that the process followed by ECI was a major deviation from the process the poll body had followed in 2003. "We want to show the massive deviation from there own SIR process which they did in 2003. No one was required to fill enumeration form. Earlier list was supposed to be treated as base list. Booth level officers had to go house to house, meet head of family. Ascertain who lives and include," he said."But with technological advancement let us not follow the 2003 process in 2025," Justice Kant opined."Let us show deviation from guidelines followed by ECI itself. There is no transparency at all. They have everything in computerised form. But still no data on who are excluded from draft list and thus we are spending hundreds of hours going through everything and find it out," Bhushan said."As per Section 23(3), rolls will freeze on October 17 which is nine days from now. Why the scheme should tell me till when I can file appeal," advocate Vrinda Grover submitted on behalf of another petitioner. "An appeal can be just by saying my name deleted and no grounds communicated and first ground is breach of natural justice. Do we have details of even one appeal filed? We are seeing too much of passion and little of reason," Justice Bagchi stated. ."We also need to scrutinise the information that we are receiving," Grover stated."Yes creates burden on you all also. Some information is partly correct and some partly incorrect. Some may be false also," said Justice Kant."ECI used to give the final electoral roll in 6 formats earlier. Technology has increased and capacity of ECI to use it has also increased. Now when 3.6 lakh are excluded, that list of excluded persons is also not given. Why is the ECI shying away from giving the list and the list in a machine readable format? What is the angle of privacy here? Everyone wants a clean voter list. The list should be analysable. That can only happen if it's machine readable," Bhushan contended.Social commentator Yogendra Yadav alleged that the SIR has some glaring discrepancies."45,000 of gibberish names are there. There are house numbers with number as zero and about 4,21,000 such houses. Then some details in Tamil and Kannada. This is what I mean by gibberish. This is the roll on which elections will be held. Then I will come to duplication. Strict test shows 5.2 lakh names are duplicate names. In draft list, it was 4.90 lakh such names. We thought ECI will do corrections but now 30,000 more names have been added. Does ECI have a deduplication software at all?" he asked.In this regard, he also flagged how certain houses had more than 800 voters."It shows 21 lakh households with bulk voters, which means each home with 10 such members who can vote. Now homes with 100 or such members - there are 4 lakh such homes. Then there is a house number 6 which has 800 plus members. But even now 880 people still live in this house. I am only telling you about 10 such homes. ECI has also added 21 lakh names even when SIR did not allow it. New voters should be 18 to 19. But here less than 20 percent of that age. 40 percent is of that bracket who are above 25 and there are 100 who are 100 years old and there are some who are 124 years old as per the final voter list," he alleged.He also said that the gap between make and female voters have increased after the SIR."Gains of 10 years in gender ratio was wiped out in Bihar SIR. Earlier, the number of women gap in electoral roll used to be 20 lakh and that became 7 lakh in January this year. SIR made it 16 lakh again and I hope this does not happen across the country and wherever SIR goes, it will happen to women," he submitted. He also accused ECI of including voters based on their relatives without seeking any documents."ECI did something great this time. They told their officers 'agar mataji pitaji nahi mil rahe toh chacha nana tau jo mile daal do'. Will they follow this in other States also? Merely 40 percent of electorate did not file any of the 11 documents and it was only vanshavali route that they got onto the rolls," he said. Dwivedi objected to the same. "What is all this ? Is it on affidavit? This is not a lecture room," he said."Let them say on affidavit that whether they used vanshavali or not," Yadav shot back.The Bench eventually asked the State Legal Services Authority to assist everyone to file appeal against exclusion from the list."They basically want this to become fait accompli. Please hear it on Tuesday," Bhushan requested the Bench.."We need some time," Dwivedi said. "Then the whole thing becomes a fait accompli," Bhushan submitted. "It is a fait accompli," Dwivedi retorted. The Court proceeded to post the case for further hearing on October 16, Thursday..[Read Live Coverage].Follow Bar and Bench channel on WhatsAppDownload the Bar and Bench Mobile app for instant access to the latest legal news.