The Supreme Court will hear petitions on September 8 challenging the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of Bihar’s electoral rolls. The move has triggered political and legal disputes before the 2025 Assembly elections.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court of India will on Monday hear several petitions challenging the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls in Bihar. The SIR, which is being carried out by the Election Commission of India (ECI) with the aim of “purifying” the voter list, has already sparked strong political and legal debates in the run-up to the 2025 Bihar Assembly elections.
According to the official causelist uploaded on the Supreme Court’s website, the matter will come up before a Bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi on September 8, when hearings on the petitions against the ECI’s order to conduct the SIR in Bihar will resume.
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Last week, the Bench headed by Justice Surya Kant refused to extend the September 1 deadline fixed by the ECI for filing claims and objections to the draft electoral rolls published after the first phase of the SIR.
The court took note of the assurance given by the ECI that even objections filed after September 1, but before the last date of filing nomination papers, would still be considered for inclusion in the final voters’ list.
The applications before the court had been moved by the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and other political parties, who sought an extension of the ECI’s deadline for submitting claim forms.
While hearing the matter on September 1, the Bench led by Justice Surya Kant passed an order that recorded:
“The process of consideration of claims will continue till the last date of nominations. Let the claims/objections be continued to be filed.”
The same order also directed the Bihar State Legal Services Authority to send para legal volunteers (PLVs) to help voters and political parties in filing online claims, objections, and corrections.
This step was seen as an effort to ensure that technical difficulties or lack of digital access would not prevent eligible voters from participating in the process.
Meanwhile, sources have revealed that the ECI is not only focusing on Bihar but is also considering the possibility of carrying out a similar Special Intensive Revision exercise across the entire country.
For this purpose, the poll body has called a high-level meeting of all state Chief Electoral Officers (CEOs) in New Delhi on September 10.
The meeting will be chaired by Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, along with the other Election Commissioners and senior officials of the Commission.
The issue carries nationwide importance because Assembly elections are scheduled to take place next year in West Bengal, Assam, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Puducherry.
Reports suggest that the poll body is seriously evaluating the idea of conducting the SIR across all states, which could have a major impact on the electoral rolls ahead of the 2025 and 2026 polls.
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