On Thursday, the Supreme Court held that voters in Bihar, whose names have been omitted in the draft electoral roll in the process of Special Intensive Revision (SIR), can file their claims with the help of their Aadhar card as a corrective measure to state identity. This decision of the court also requires the Election Commission (EC) to carry the names and reasons of deleted voters in the newspapers, radio and television with wide publicity.
The directions were issued by a bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi, which was hearing petitions against the June 24 decision of the EC to have the SIR in Bihar. The court asked the EC to submit a compliance report on these directives by August 22, and two hearings on the pleas challenging the revision exercise were postponed.
The bench also asked the EC during the proceedings why it could not reveal the names of the voters whose removal was a result of death, migration and the changing constituency. In response, the EC has said that such information had already been provided to political parties in the state.
The petitions against Bihar SIR have been moved by opposition party heads, such as Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the Congress party, and the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR), which is a non-governmental organisation and an election watchdog. They have contended that the revision exercise might end up in erroneous deletions and disenfranchisement.
As has already been noted by the Supreme Court itself on August 13, electoral rolls cannot be fixed, and they need a periodic change. It further observed that the fact that the list of acceptable identity documents had been increased from seven to eleven to facilitate the Bihar SIR process was not only voter-friendly but not exclusionary, too. The court pointed out that this procedure must be transparent and also should be open so that no elector is denied their right to vote unjustly.
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