New Delhi – The Supreme Court on Wednesday described Bihar’s ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) of the electoral roll as “voter friendly,” pointing to the increased number of acceptable identification documents compared to previous revisions.
A Bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi, hearing a batch of petitions challenging the Election Commission’s June 24 decision to conduct the SIR in poll-bound Bihar, said the shift from seven accepted documents in earlier summary revisions to 11 in the current exercise appeared to expand voter access.
“The number of documents in the summary revision earlier in the state was seven, and in the SIR it is 11, which shows it is voter friendly,” the Bench observed. “We understand your arguments that non-acceptance of Aadhaar is exclusionary, but a high number of documents is actually inclusionary.”
Electors are required to submit any one of the 11 listed documents to update or confirm their details in the electoral roll. The petitioners, however, argue that the expanded list offers limited practical benefit.
Senior advocate Abhishek Singhvi, representing the petitioners, said that while the number of documents may have increased, their actual coverage among Bihar’s electorate was poor. He pointed out that only one to two per cent of voters in the state hold passports, and there is no provision for permanent resident certificates.
“If we see the availability of documents with the population in Bihar, it can be seen the coverage is very low,” Singhvi submitted.
Justice Bagchi countered that the presence of roughly 36 lakh passport holders in the state indicated reasonable coverage. He added that such lists are typically prepared after consulting various government departments to ensure broad accessibility.
Earlier, on August 12, the Supreme Court had backed the Election Commission’s decision not to treat Aadhaar and voter cards as conclusive proof of citizenship for the purposes of the revision. The Bench noted that the inclusion or exclusion of names from electoral rolls falls squarely within the EC’s jurisdiction.
The court also observed that the dispute reflects “largely a trust deficit issue” despite EC data showing that about 6.5 crore of Bihar’s 7.9 crore voters did not need to submit fresh documents, as their or their parents’ names already appeared in the 2003 rolls.
