SC to hear on July 10 pleas against EC’s decision to revise electoral rolls in Bihar

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear on July 10 a batch of petitions challenging the decision of the Election Commission (EC) to undertake special intensive revision of electoral rolls in poll-bound Bihar.

Several fresh pleas including a joint petition by opposition parties leaders of Congress, NCP (Sharad Pawar), Shiv Sena (UBT), Samajwadi Party, JMM, CPI and CPI (ML) were filed in the apex court against the poll panel’s decision to conduct the special intensive revision (SIR) before Bihar went to polls.

A bench comprising Justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and Joymalya Bagchi considered the submissions of lawyers led by senior counsel Kapil Sibal, who was representing several petitioners, and agreed to hear the pleas on July 10.

During the brief hearing, Sibal requested that a notice be issued in the matter. However, the court instead listed the case for hearing on July 10 and allowed the petitioners to serve advance copies of the petitions to the ECI.

Other lawyers appearing for the petitioners included Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Shadan Farasat, and Gopal Sankaranarayanan.

The petitioners argued that voters who fail to submit the required forms and documents could be deleted from the electoral rolls, even if they have been voting for decades.

Singhvi pointed out that Bihar has an electorate of around 8 crore, and nearly 4 crore voters are required to go through re-verification. “The timeline is so strict that if you don’t submit documents by July 25, you will be excluded,” he said.

Echoing his concerns, Sibal added, “It is an impossible task.” The court observed that the timeline for the exercise “does not have sanctity” since elections in Bihar have not yet been notified.

So far, at least five petitions have been filed in the Supreme Court, including those by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), Trinamool Congress MP Mahua MoitraRJD MP Manoj Jha, and others.

The petitioners are seeking a direction to quash the ECI’s June 24, 2025 order initiating the SIR in Bihar.

The Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), in a plea contended that the SIR violates Articles 14, 19, 21, 325, and 326 of the Constitution, as well as provisions of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 and the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960.

The NGO argued that the directive demands voters to prove their citizenship, and that of their parents excluding commonly used IDs like Aadhaar and ration cards. This, it said, disproportionately affects marginalized groups, including SCs, STs, and migrant workers.

“The SIR shifts the burden of inclusion from the State to the citizen, with an impractically short timeline and no due process,” ADR stated.

With state elections due in November 2025, ADR warned that over 3 crore voters could face disenfranchisement, especially those lacking documents due to poverty, migration, or absence from the 2003 rolls.

The plea also noted that a Special Summary Revision (SSR) had already been conducted between October 2024 and January 2025, addressing voter list updates. The NGO called the SIR exercise unjustified, lacking transparency or legal basis.

“There is no recorded reason for this sudden revision, making the directive arbitrary and liable to be struck down,” ADR said.

TMC MP Mahua Moitra urged the court to restrain the ECI from issuing similar directives in other states, accusing the poll body of acting at the behest of the ruling BJP and attempting to disenfranchise the poor and migrants.

RJD MP Manoj Jha, in his petition, described the SIR as “hasty and ill-timed,” adding that it would disenfranchise crores of voters and violate their constitutional right to vote.

Jha further alleged that the decision was made without consulting political parties and is being used to carry out “aggressive and opaque revisions” of electoral rolls targeting Muslim, Dalit, and poor migrant communities. These are not random patterns, he argued, but “engineered exclusions.”

Jha’s petition also cited the Supreme Court’s 1995 ruling in Lal Babu Hussein v. Electoral Registration Officer, which held that deletion of names from electoral rolls must follow a fair and reasonable procedure.

He called the ECI’s June 24 order discriminatory, unreasonable, and manifestly arbitrary, arguing that it violates Articles 14, 21, 325, and 326 and amounts to a tool of institutionalized disenfranchisement.