Verdict on Bihar SIR will apply to entire country: Supreme Court

Maintaining that it didn’t want to offer “any piecemeal opinion” on the issue, the Supreme Court on Monday said its judgment on the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in poll-bound Bihar will be applicable to the whole country.

“Our judgement in Bihar SIR will be applicable for Pan-India SIR,” a Bench of Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi said, adding it can’t stop the poll panel from conducting a similar exercise across India.

Posting the petitions challenging the Bihar SIR exercise for hearing final arguments on October 7, the Bench said it presumed that the Election Commission — being a constitutional authority — was following the law during SIR in Bihar.

The Bench warned that the entire SIR exercise in Bihar would be set aside in case any illegality was found at any stage.

The petitioners wanted the Bench to take up the matter before October 1 — the date of publication of the final voters’ list in Bihar but the Bench refused it, saying “What difference will it make to us? If we are satisfied there is some illegality, we can...”

The Bench also issued notice to the parties on a plea seeking the recall of its September 8 order requiring the poll panel to include Aadhaar number as the 12^th prescribed document in the Bihar SIR. The applicant submitted that Aadhaar numbers were issued even to foreigners.

On September 8, it had asked the Election Commission to accept Aadhaar as the 12^th document for the purpose of establishing a person’s identity for inclusion in the electoral rolls during the SIR in Bihar.

However, it had clarified that Aadhaar was not a proof of citizenship and the Election Commission was entitled to verify its genuineness before adding applicants’ names to electoral rolls.

The EC claimed that 99.6 per cent of the 7.24 crore electors in the draft electoral roll had already filed their eligibility documents.

Amid demands from Opposition political parties for extension of time for filing claims and objections with regard to the SIR of Electoral Rolls in Bihar, the EC had told the Supreme Court that it can be done even after the September 1 deadline.

On August 1, the EC came out with the ‘draft electoral rolls’ in Bihar, enlisting 7.24 crore voters. The final electoral roll will be out on September 30, 2025. Of the total 65 lakh voters removed from the draft electoral rolls, 22.34 lakh were dead and 36.28 lakh had permanently shifted or were absent while 7.01 lakh voters were enrolled at more than one places, the EC said. The EC said that roughly 6.5 crore people of the total 7.9 crore voting population didn’t have to file any documents for them or their parents who featured in the 2003 electoral rolls.

However, the petitioners, including the Association for Democratic Reforms, expressed the apprehension that a large number of voters will be disenfranchised.

On August 14, the Supreme Court had asked the EC to publish details of 65 lakh deleted names from voters’ list and give reasons for their non-inclusion to enhance transparency in the SIR exercise in Bihar where Assembly elections are to be held in October-November 2025.