'Largely appears to be case of trust deficit': Supreme Court on Bihar's SIR exercise row

Sibal contended that despite residents holding Aadhaar, ration and EPIC cards, officials refused to accept the documents.

"Is it your argument that people who have no documents but are in Bihar and therefore he should be considered as a voter of the state. That can be allowed. He has to show or submit some documents (sic)," the bench said.

When Sibal said people were struggling to find birth certificates and other documents of their parents, Justice Kant said, "It is a very sweeping statement that in Bihar nobody has the documents. If this happens in Bihar, then what will happen in other parts of the country?" Senior advocate Abhishek Singhvi and advocate Prashant Bhushan, who were representing different political parties, also questioned the timeline for the completion of the exercise and the data of 65 lakh voters who were declared as dead or migrated or registered in other constituencies.

Political activist Yogendra Yadav, who addressed the court in person, questioned the data given by the poll panel and said instead of 7.9 crore voters there was total adult population of 8.18 crore and the design of SIR exercise was to delete the voters.

"They (EC) were not able to find any individual whose name was added and the booth level officers visited house to house for deletion of names," Yadav said, calling it a case of "total disenfranchisement".

Sibal during the hearing said while in one constituency, contrary to the poll panel's claims, 12 people declared dead were found alive, in another instance alive persons were declared dead.

Senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, appearing for the poll panel, said the exercise of such a nature was "bound to have some defects here and there at the draft stage" and to claim dead persons were declared alive and alive as dead could always be corrected as it was only a draft roll.

The bench in the beginning of the hearing told the ECI to "be ready" with facts and figures for it would be question over the number of voters before the exercise commenced; number of dead before and now aside from other relevant details.

The hearing would resume on Wednesday.

On July 29, terming the election commission a constitutional authority deemed to act in accordance with law, the top court said it will step in immediately if there is "mass exclusion" in the SIR of electoral rolls in Bihar.

The draft roll was published on August 1 and the final roll is scheduled to be published on September 30 amid opposition claims that the ongoing exercise will deprive crores of eligible citizens from their right to vote.

On July 10, the top court asked the EC to consider Aadhaar, voter ID and ration cards as valid documents as it allowed the poll panel to continue with its exercise in Bihar.

The EC affidavit has justified its ongoing SIR of electoral rolls in Bihar, saying it adds to the purity of the election by "weeding out ineligible persons" from the electoral rolls.

Beside RJD MP Jha and Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra, Congress' KC Venugopal, Supriya Sule from the Sharad Pawar NCP faction, D Raja from Communist Party of India, Harinder Singh Malik from Samajwadi Party, Arvind Sawant from Shiv Sena (Uddhav Thackeray), Sarfraz Ahmed from Jharkhand Mukti Morcha and Dipankar Bhattacharya of CPI (ML) have jointly moved the top court challenging the June 24 decision of the election commission.

Several other civil society organisations like PUCL, NGO Association of Democratic Reforms and activists like Yogendra Yadav have moved the top court against the EC order.