Supreme Court reviews ‘trust concerns’ over Bihar voter list revamp
By : Krishna Mishra
As Bihar heads toward assembly elections, the Supreme Court is hearing petitions challenging the Election Commission of India’s special intensive revision of the state’s electoral rolls, amid allegations that millions of voters could be excluded.
During Tuesday’s hearing, Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi described the dispute as “largely a trust deficit issue.” The Election Commission told the court that about 6.5 crore of Bihar’s 7.9 crore voters did not need to submit any documents because their names or their parents’ names were already in the 2003 roll.
Petitioners, including RJD MP Manoj Jha, claimed that the revision could disenfranchise one crore voters. The bench noted that if 7.24 crore voters took part in the process, the theory of mass exclusion weakened. The court also agreed with the Election Commission’s position that Aadhaar and voter ID cards are not conclusive proof of citizenship and must be supported by other documents.
Kapil Sibal argued that many people were struggling to produce birth certificates and other parental documents, but Justice Kant said it was too sweeping to suggest that no one in Bihar had the necessary papers. Other lawyers, including Abhishek Singhvi and Prashant Bhushan, as well as activist Yogendra Yadav, questioned the accuracy of the data and the timeline for the exercise, claiming it was designed to delete voters. They cited cases of living people being marked as dead.
Election Commission lawyer Rakesh Dwivedi acknowledged that some mistakes were possible in the draft roll but said they could be fixed before the final version is published on September 30. The draft was released on August
The court has asked the Commission to provide full details on voter numbers before and after the revision and the count of deceased voters, warning it will step in immediately if there is evidence of large-scale exclusion. The Election Commission maintains that the exercise is intended to remove ineligible names and improve the accuracy of Bihar’s voter lists ahead of the October–November polls.