Leaders of 8 Opposition parties jointly move SC against Bihar electoral rolls’ revision

Leaders of eight Opposition parties have jointly moved the Supreme Court against the Election Commission’s decision to conduct a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls in Bihar, ahead of Assembly elections to be held in October-November.

KC Venugopal (Congress), Supriya Sule (NCP-Sharad Pawar), D Raja (CPI), Harinder Malik (Samajwadi Party), Arvind Sawant (Shiv Sena UBT), Sarfraz Ahmed (JMM), Dipankar Bhattacharya (CPI-Marxist-Leninist) and DMK have urged the Top Court to stay the process for Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls in Bihar. Former Bihar MLA Mujahid Alam has also filed a petition in the court on the issue.

Acting on petitions filed by the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR), People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), RJD MP Manoj Jha, TMC MP Mahua Moitra and activist Yogendra Yadav, the Supreme Court had on Monday agreed to take up on July 10 petitions challenging the Special Intensive Revision of Electoral Rolls (SIR) in Bihar.

A Bench of Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia and Justice Joymalya Bagchi listed the matter for hearing on Thursday after senior advocates Kapil Sibal, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Gopal Sankaranarayanan and several other counsel mentioned petitions filed by various NGOs and political parties seeking urgent hearing, apprehending a large number of voters might get disenfranchised.

The EC had on June 24 ordered an SIR in Bihar — first since 2003 — to weed out ineligible individuals and ensure only eligible citizens were included in the electoral rolls. The exercise was necessitated by rapid urbanisation, frequent migration, young citizens becoming eligible to vote, non-reporting of deaths and inclusion of the names of foreign illegal immigrants, it said.

The EC has clarified that while voters were required to ‘submit their documents any time before July 25, 2025’, those who failed to do so would get an opportunity ‘during the Claims and Objections period also’. It has urged people to ‘beware of statements being made by a few persons, who without reading the SIR order dated June 24, 2025, are attempting to confuse the public with their incorrect and misleading statements’.

The SIR was progressing as per EC’s order and the draft list would contain the names of existing voters whose enumeration forms were received, the Bihar Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) said in a social media post on Sunday.

Apprehending potential disenfranchisement of nearly three crore voters, the ADR had on last Saturday filed a PIL, urging the Top Court to set aside the EC’s SIR Order as being arbitrary and violative of Articles 14, 19, 21, 325 and 326 of the Constitution as well as provisions of Representation of People’s Act, 1950, and Rule 21A of the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960. Pending its petition, the petitioner NGO urged the court to stay the implementation of EC’s June 24, 2025, SIR Order to conduct an SIR of the electoral rolls in poll-bound Bihar.

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