Supreme Court hears Bihar electoral roll revision case: LIVE UPDATES

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 under Article 324 of the Constitution and Section 21(3) of the Representation of the People Act, 1950.

It has maintained that the revision was necessary in light of urban migration, demographic shifts, and long-standing concerns about the accuracy of existing rolls, which had not been intensively revised in nearly twenty years.

The Commission has further submitted that the SIR 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.

The petitioners include opposition leaders from various States, and organizations such as the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), the People's Union for Civil Liberties, and the National Federation for Indian Women.

More recently, the ADR filed an interim application urging the Court to direct the ECI to disclose details of 65 lakh names recently dropped from a Bihar electoral roll published on August 1 as part of the SIR.

The ECI responded by stating that there was no legal requirement for it to disclose such reasons for publish a separate list of excluded voters.

It, however, added that no name will be struck off from Bihar’s draft electoral roll without prior notice, an opportunity to be heard and a reasoned order from the competent authority.

On Tuesday, the Court orally observed that the inclusion and exclusion of citizens and non-citizens from the electoral rolls falls within the remit of the ECI. It also remarked that ECI was right in stating that an Aadhaar card is not conclusive proof of citizenship.

In yesterday's hearing, the Court noted that the ECI's decision to accept more documents to prove a person's identity for being included in the electoral rolls appeared to be voter friendly.

Live updates from the hearing today feature here.