Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Oct 7: The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the Election Commission of India (ECI) about the individual details of voters added to the final list of voters in Bihar after the “Special Intensive Revision” (SIR) of the State’s electoral roll pointing out the confusion about whether names added in final list are those deleted from draft roll.
Reminding the poll body that “the degree of transparency and access to information form the hallmarks of an open democracy,” the apex court asked the ECI if it had individually informed excluded voters, to aid their right to appeal. The ECI, however, claimed that there was no complaints about exclusions yet. Over 21.5 lakh voters have been added in the final roll, and 3.66 lakh removed.
“There is a confusion about the names added on in the final list… What is the identity of the people added on? Is it an add-on of names taken from the 65 lakh voters deleted in the draft roll or are they new and independent names? The final list shows an appreciation of the number of voters… This exercise we want you to do is in aid of the electoral process, to maintain intact the faith in the electoral process,” Justice Joymalya Bagchi, who was part of the Bench headed by Justice Surya Kant, asked the Election Commission (EC).
The final list shows that there are 7.42 eligible voters in the State. This was higher than the 7.24 crore voters listed in the draft electoral roll published after the first phase of the SIR, which had seen the removal of 65 lakh names, given that Bihar had 7.89 crore voters on June 24, the date of notification of the SIR exercise.
The court asked the EC whether the 3.66 lakh voters deleted from the final list were individually informed through a formal order of deletion to facilitate the filing of appeals against their exclusion. “They have a right to appeal,” Justice Kant told the EC.
The Bench also asked whether a separate list of the names and details of the 3.66 lakh excluded voters had been published and made easily accessible at the grassroots level. Justice Bagchi referred to Rule 21A of the Registration of Electors’ Rules, 1960, which requires poll authorities to display the names and details of deleted voters on the notice boards of district electoral offices.
Senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, for the EC, said the disaggregated data was still being collected from ground-level officers and processed. However, there has not been a single complaint against any exclusion of names in the final list, he said, noting that the final electoral roll has already been shared with political parties. “Who is deleted and who is not requires only a basic comparison between the draft roll and the final list,” Mr Dwivedi argued.
Justice Kant, at one point in the hearing, threw the EC’s line of argument at the petitioners’ lawyers, advocates Prashant Bhushan and Neha Rathi. “Mr Bhushan, but where are the aggrieved people? The draft voter list is available on the EC website, the final voter list is also available. You could compare and identify the excluded names. Show us specific cases in the 3.66 lakh deleted voters whose names were deleted without any communication… This cannot be a roving enquiry… For whom are you doing this? They may be illegals who were deleted from the voter list, would they come out and complain?” Justice Kant asked them.
Mr Bhushan said the SIR, instead of cleaning up the electoral process, has only compounded the problems due to the EC’s opacity. The court asked the EC to address the issues raised in Mr Bhushan’s written submissions on Thursday. These submissions contended that though the official estimate of the adult population in Bihar for September 2025 was 8.22 crore, the number of electors in the final rolls was only 7.42 crore.
“Thus, 80 lakh, that is, approximately 10% of the total adult population of Bihar has been denied their right to vote. Such a sharp fall in the adult population to electors’ ratio is a record for India and for Bihar,” the written submissions said. In no State of the country previously have as much as 10% of the electorate been excluded from the electoral roll, Mr Bhushan said. He added that lakhs of women were ‘missing’ from Bihar’s electoral rolls.
“After SIR, while Bihar’s gender ratio is 934 in September 2025, the gender ratio in the final electoral rolls has fallen sharply to 892. This translates into 17 lakh missing women… SIR has wiped out a whole decade’s gains in the gender ratio of electoral rolls,” said the submissions presented in court.
The SIR exercise has also resulted in the disproportionate exclusion of Muslims, Mr Bhushan claimed. “Our analysis based on name recognition software, shows that Muslims were 25% among the 65 lakh voters excluded from the draft rolls and 34% among the 3.66 lakh deleted electors from the final rolls… This disproportionate exclusion accounts for the reduction of about six lakh Muslim voters,” he submitted.
The court asked the EC to respond to Mr Bhushan’s analysis that at least 5.17 lakh names on the final rolls appear to be duplicates. “There are over 2.5 lakh cases of blank or junk households numbers, over 25,000 electors with gibberish names and nearly 60,000 entries with invalid gender or relation or gender relations mismatch,” the written submissions alleged.
The court posted the case for further hearing on Thursday.
