Supreme Court to hear petitions against SIR in Bihar on Monday

The Supreme Court will take up on Monday petitions challenging the Election Commission’s June 24 notification for conducting Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in poll-bound Bihar.

A Bench of Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi will consider the response of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), AIMIM and other petitioners on the EC’s claim that 99.5 per cent of the 7.24 crore electors in the draft electoral roll had already filed their eligibility documents.

The top court earlier had directed the poll panel to allow those excluded from the draft roll to submit their claims through the online mode, besides making physical submissions in the SIR exercise.

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

Senior counsel Rakesh Dwivedi, representing the poll panel, however, told the Bench that such claims and objections filed beyond the deadline will be considered after finalisation of the electoral rolls. Any extension of the deadline will lead to disruption of the entire SIR exercise and finalisation of the final electoral roll, Dwivedi had told the Bench, requesting it not to extend the deadline, saying it may become a never-ending process, if extended.

In view of a statement made by Dwivedi, the Bench had chosen not to pass any orders on pleas filed by the RJD and the AIMIM.

Terming the confusion over the Bihar SIR as largely a trust issue, the top court had asked the state legal services authority to deploy paralegal volunteers to assist individual voters and political parties in filing claims and objections to the draft electoral rolls published on August 1. It directed paralegal volunteers to file confidential reports with the district judges concerned, and the same would be considered on September 8.

RJD and AIMIM had filed applications for extension of the September 1 deadline to file objections to the draft voters list and claims for inclusion by those excluded.

However, Dwivedi said 99.5% of the 7.24 crore electors in the draft electoral rolls had filed the eligibility documents. He countered the RJD's contention that it had filed 36 claims, asserting the party had filed only 10 claims.

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. 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 claimed 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.