Leaders of eight parties move top court against Bihar poll roll 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 the Assembly elections to be held in October-November this year.

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 the DMK have urged the top court to stay the SIR process. Former Bihar MLA Mujahid Alam has also filed a petition in the SC 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 SC had on Monday agreed to take up on July 10 petitions challenging the SIR.

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.

Needed before every poll: BJP leader in SC

BJP leader Ashwini Upadhyay has demanded poll roll revision before every Lok Sabha, Assembly and local body election. As he sought his plea’s hearing on July 10 along with other PILs, the SC asked him to remove procedural defects. “Demography of 200 districts and 1,500 tehsils has changed due to illegal infiltration, deceitful conversions and population explosion. An SIR is must,” Upadhyay said.

The EC had on June 24 ordered the 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 & 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)…. were attempting to confuse the public with their incorrect and misleading statements”.

The SIR was progressing as per the 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 the 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.

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