Supreme Court to hear pleas against EC’s nationwide voter roll revision on Nov 11

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear on November 11 a set of petitions challenging the Election Commission’s (EC) decision to carry out a pan-India Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.

A bench comprising Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi said the hearing would begin on November 11 after advocate Prashant Bhushan, representing the NGO Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR), urged the court to take up the matter, calling it one that “goes to the root of democracy.”

The bench noted that several key matters are already listed from November 11 onwards but assured that it would make necessary adjustments to accommodate the hearing on the SIR issue. Bhushan told the court that the urgency arises from the EC having already begun the SIR exercise in several states.

The top court is already seized of similar petitions questioning the EC’s move to conduct the SIR in Bihar. On October 16, the poll panel defended its decision before the Supreme Court, calling the Bihar exercise “accurate” and asserting that the petitioners, including political parties and NGOs, were attempting to discredit the process through “false allegations”.

The EC also stated that no voter has filed an appeal against any name deletion since the publication of the final electoral roll in Bihar. It denied allegations that Muslims had been disproportionately excluded during the revision.The EC published Bihar’s final electoral list on September 30, showing a total of 7.42 crore electors, down by nearly 47 lakh from the 7.89 crore recorded before the SIR. However, this marked an increase of 17.87 lakh from the draft list issued on August 1, which had removed 65 lakh voters for reasons including death, migration, or duplication. During the revision, 21.53 lakh new electors were added, while 3.66 lakh names were deleted. Meanwhile, polling for the first phase of Bihar’s 243-member Assembly concluded on Thursday across 121 constituencies. The remaining 122 seats will go to polls on November 11, with counting scheduled for November 14.