Today, On 9th October, Supreme Court declines a blanket order in Bihar voter roll revision, emphasizing learning from Bihar before nationwide SIR rollout and directing para-legal volunteers and legal service lawyers to help affected voters. “You have decided to carry out SIR across the country, this experience in Bihar will make you wiser. You will learn from this experience,” the Court added.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court is examining a group of petitions challenging the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) June 24 order directing a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls in Bihar.
A bench comprising Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi is hearing the case.
The Court emphasized learning from Bihar’s experience before implementing SIR nationwide.
Justice Kant said,
“You have decided to carry out SIR across the country, this experience in Bihar will make you wiser. You will learn from this experience,” ,
He also added,
“We going ahead with the premises that the authorities know what they are doing.”
The hearing started with the Election Commission (EC) counsel rejecting claims about alleged deletions of certain individuals from the draft rolls.
Senior Advocate Rakesh Dwivedi said that some petitioners could not be found at the given addresses.
Noting that NGOs filing petitions should verify their claims before submitting affidavits, Justice Surya Kant observed,
“There is no proof that such a person even exists,”
Advocate Prashant Bhushan raised concerns that people in the draft roll suddenly do not appear in the final list, and that deleted voters were not provided individual orders of deletion.
Justice Kant suggested that affected individuals could approach district legal service authorities.
Justice Bagchi challenged petitioners to provide evidence of violations, stating,
“People should file appeals citing violation of principles of natural justice. Show us at least one such appeal.”
Justice Kant emphasized that EC orders on appeals “cannot be a cryptic one-liner.”
Advocate Prashant Bhushan questioned the EC’s transparency, asking,
“Why is the EC shying from giving the separate list of over 21 lakh add-on voters and 3.66 lakh deleted voters? Why is the EC not providing this info in a machine-readable format?”
He added that some names in the final list were “gibberish” and noted that while the EC has the technology to disaggregate data, it is not being used.
The Court directed the Bihar State Legal Services Authority to deploy para-legal volunteers and legal service lawyers to assist the 3.66 lakh voters deleted from the final list in filing statutory appeals, as the last date for filing draws near.
Activist Yogendra Yadav highlighted 21 lakh households with 3.59 crore voters, raising suspicion of about 10 voters per household. When Senior Advocate Dwivedi suggested joint families, Mr. Yadav questioned if field checks were conducted.
He also claimed that the final list included new voters over 100 years old. Mr. Yadav pointed out significant document and script errors, noting that a large percentage of people listed had not shown even a single one of the 11 indicative documents.
BLOs were allegedly instructed to reinstate names quietly to prevent gaps in numbers.
Yadav warned of a sharp fall in gender ratio from 934 to 892, translating to 17 lakh missing women, and highlighted instances of names in Tamil, Kannada, blank spouse names, and missing addresses.
He also alleged the largest shrinkage of voters in Bihar’s history, with 47 lakh deletions. Considering Bihar’s adult population in September 2025 was 8.22 crore, the final list contained only 7.42 crore voters, leaving around 10% of adults excluded, a record in India.
Citing very low voter turnout in urban high-class areas. Justice Bagchi noted,
“The aversion to electoral process is seen more in the higher social classes,”
The Supreme Court has now listed the case for October 16, 2025. The Bench adjourned, reiterating that the Bihar experience must guide the national SIR exercise, and that authorities are expected to act responsibly and transparently.
Earlier, On July 10, the Bench instructed the ECI to accept Aadhaar cards, ration cards, and EPICs as valid forms of identification for voter inclusion. Subsequently, it permitted the publication of the draft electoral rolls on August 1, while cautioning that it would step in if there were instances of “mass exclusion.”
Earlier, On September 8, the court had ordered the Election Commission to accept Aadhaar as proof of identity, adding it to the list of 11 other acceptable documents.
However, it clarified that Aadhaar could not be used to prove citizenship. On Monday, the bench issued a notice regarding the petition for modification and scheduled October 7 for final arguments on the legitimacy of the SIR process.
Earlier, On August 6, the Court learned that 6.5 million names were removed from the draft electoral roll published on August 1. The ECI assured the Court that no names would be removed without prior notice, an opportunity for a hearing, and a reasoned order from the appropriate authority.
The Election Commission of India (ECI), On 24 June 2025, started a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls in Bihar before the Assembly elections. Under this process, voters were asked to provide updated documents, but many citizens did not have them.
Opposition parties and several NGOs criticised this move, saying it could deprive a large number of genuine voters of their right to vote. They approached the Supreme Court (SC), calling the ECI’s action arbitrary and against the Constitution.
Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi, along with others such as RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav, participated in a Voter Adhikar Yatra in Bihar to protest what they describe as widespread vote theft aimed at benefiting the BJP, allegedly in collusion with the Election Commission.
The Opposition contends that the Bihar SIR is a significant part of this scheme.
The Commission, On 1 August 2025, released the draft electoral roll, which showed a total of 7.24 crore registered voters. At the same time, around 65 lakh names were removed from the list.
Petitioners, including the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), requested the Supreme Court to order the ECI to make public the full list of voters whose names were dropped, along with the reasons for each deletion. They said that without such transparency, many citizens might lose their right to vote without being given a fair chance to object.
Case Title: ASSOCIATION FOR DEMOCRATIC REFORMS AND ORS. Versus ELECTION COMMISSION OF INDIA, W.P.(C) No. 640/2025 (and connected cases)
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