New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday described the controversy over Bihar’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls as “largely a trust-deficit issue,” after the Election Commission of India (ECI) asserted that about 6.5 crore of the state’s 7.9 crore voters did not need to submit documents since they or their parents were listed in the 2003 electoral roll.
A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi made the observation while hearing multiple petitions challenging the ECI’s June 24 decision to conduct the SIR, which opponents claim could disenfranchise around one crore voters.
“If out of 7.9 crore voters, 7.24 crore responded to the SIR, it demolishes the theory of one crore missing or disenfranchised voters,” the bench told senior advocate Kapil Sibal, who appeared for petitioner and RJD leader Manoj Jha.
The court supported the ECI’s stance that Aadhaar and voter ID cards cannot serve as conclusive proof of citizenship without supplementary documents. Sibal argued that residents holding Aadhaar, ration, and EPIC cards were being turned away by officials.
The bench countered: “It is a very sweeping statement that in Bihar nobody has documents. If this happens in Bihar, what will happen in other parts of the country?”
Senior advocates Abhishek Singhvi and Prashant Bhushan, along with political activist Yogendra Yadav, also questioned the exercise’s design, timeline, and the ECI’s claim that 65 lakh voters were either dead, migrated, or registered elsewhere. Yadav alleged the SIR’s intent was “total disenfranchisement”, pointing to cases where alive persons were marked as dead and no new voters were reportedly added.
The ECI’s counsel, Rakesh Dwivedi, defended the process, admitting minor errors at the draft stage but stressing they could be corrected before the final roll.
The Supreme Court will continue hearing the matter on Wednesday.
