Bihar SIR row: Furnish details of 65 lakh voters deleted from draft electoral rolls, SC tells EC

Ahead of the August 12 hearing on petitions challenging Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar, the Supreme Court on Wednesday asked the Election Commission to furnish by Saturday details of around 65 lakh voters deleted from the draft electoral rolls.

A Bench of Justice Surya Kant, Justice Ujjal Bhuyan and Justice N Kotiswar Singh asked the EC counsel to furnish the details of deleted voters already shared with political parties and give a copy to petitioner Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR).

"File a reply by Saturday and let Mr. (Prashant) Bhushan (representing ADR) look at it. Then we can see what is disclosed and what is not disclosed,” the Bench told the EC's counsel.

The order came on the ADR’s fresh application seeking direction to the poll panel to publish names of around 65 lakh deleted voters clarifying if they were dead, have permanently migrated or they were not considered for any other reason.

"We will see (to it) that every voter likely to be affected gets the required information," assured the Bench which had on July 29 said it will step in if there was mass exclusion of eligible voters in poll-bound Bihar and the Election Commission deviated from its June 24, 2025 SIR notification.

“We are over-viewing the thing as a judicial authority. If there is mass exclusion, we will immediately step in. Bring 15 people saying they are alive, we will deal with it,” the Bench had said, posting the matter for hearing on August 12 and 13.

On Wednesday, Bhushan alleged that 75% voters who filled the enumeration form did not furnish any supporting documents as mentioned in the list of 11 documents but their names were included on the recommendation of Booth Level Officer (BLO). Some political parties were given a list of deleted voters but there was no further clarification if the said voters were dead or they had migrated, he alleged.

The Bench, however, told Bhushan that it was now only a draft voter list and the reason for deletion would come in subsequently. Earlier, describing the Election Commission as a constitutional body discharging the functions assigned to it, the Bench had refused to stay the SIR in Bihar.

On June 24, the EC ordered an SIR in Bihar — first since 2003 — to weed out ineligible individuals and ensure only eligible citizens were included in the electoral rolls. The exercise was necessitated by rapid urbanisation, frequent migration, young citizens becoming eligible to vote, non-reporting of deaths, and inclusion of the names of foreign illegal immigrants, the poll panel said, adding the SIR was necessary to maintain purity of electoral rolls.

On August 1, the EC came out with the 'draft electoral rolls' in Bihar, enlisting 7.24 crore voters. However, it deleted more than 65 lakh names from the voter list, claiming that most of the deleted voters had either died or migrated. The final electoral roll will be out on September 30, 2025.

Of the total 65 lakh voters removed from the draft rolls, 22.34 lakh were dead and 36.28 lakh were in the category of permanently shifted/absent while 7.01 lakh voters were enrolled at more than one places, the EC said.