Supreme Court to hear on September 8 pleas against ECs decision to conduct SIR in Bihar

Election Commission

The Supreme Court will hear on Monday a set of petitions, including those filed by political parties, challenging the Election Commission’s June 24 decision to carry out a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar ahead of the polls.

A bench comprising Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi will examine the responses of parties such as the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), AIMIM, and other petitioners to the poll panel’s submission that 99.5% of the 7.24 crore voters in the draft roll had furnished their eligibility documents during the SIR exercise.

The Supreme Court will continue hearing the batch of petitions filed by NGOs, activists, and political parties, which it has been considering since August 22. On that date, the court had directed the Election Commission to permit voters excluded from the draft roll to submit their claims online in addition to making physical submissions under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise in Bihar.

During the September 1 hearing on applications from political parties seeking an extension of deadlines, the poll panel informed the court that claims, objections, and corrections to the draft electoral roll could still be filed after September 1. However, these would only be taken into account once the final roll is published.

The court also clarified that such claims and objections can be submitted until the last date for filing nomination papers in each assembly constituency.

The top court also termed the confusion over the Bihar SIR as “largely a trust issue” and directed the state legal service authority to deploy paralegal volunteers to assist individual voters and political parties in filing claims and objections to the draft roll, which was published on August 1.

The poll panel, which had opposed any extension of the September 1 deadline for filing of claims and objections as per the SIR schedule, had submitted that post the top court’s August 22 order, till August 30, only 22,723 claims had been filed for inclusion and 1,34,738 objections had been filed for exclusion.

According to the June 24 schedule of the poll panel for the Bihar SIR, the deadline for filing claims and objections to the draft roll ended on September 1, and the final electoral roll will be published on September 30.

The top court had asked the political parties to submit their replies in response to the EC’s note.

The top court had said the paralegal volunteers would submit a confidential report to the district judges concerned and the collated data of the state would be considered on September 8.

It had said the EC has to follow the procedure prescribed in the June 24 order related to Bihar SIR and expressed concern over the high rate of objections filed for exclusion of names from the draft roll.

“Political parties need to activate themselves,” it had said and posted the matter for September 8.

The RJD’s plea filed through advocate Fauzia Shakil and the AIMIM’s through advocate Nizam Pasha have sought extension of the deadline to file claims and objections in the poll revision exercise in poll-bound Bihar.

The special intensive revision of the voter list in Bihar — the first since 2003 — sparked a huge political row, with the opposition parties alleging that the exercise is aimed at depriving people of their right to vote. The EC has maintained that SIR is being conducted to clean the voter list by deleting names of people who are dead, have duplicate voter cards or are illegal immigrants.

The SIR’s findings reduced the total number of registered voters in Bihar, from 7.9 crore before the exercise to 7.24 crore after conducting it.

With inputs from PTI