Bihar Voter Roll Revision: ‘Exercise Not The Problem, Timing Is,’ Supreme Court Tells EC
The Supreme Court on Thursday observed that while the Election Commission’s (EC) intensive exercise to revise the electoral rolls in Bihar is a constitutional mandate, the timing of the move, coming just months ahead of the state assembly elections, is a matter of concern.
A bench of Justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and Joymalya Bagchi, hearing a clutch of petitions challenging the EC’s decision, remarked, “Your (ECI) exercise is not the problem, it is the timing.”
The top court acknowledged the logic behind the EC’s move to conduct a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) to purge duplicate entries and non-citizens from the voter lists, a process initiated after decades. “What they are doing is a mandate under the Constitution. There is a practicality involved,” the bench noted.
The EC had ordered the revision last month, a move that drew sharp criticism from opposition parties in Bihar, including the RJD and Congress, who have accused the poll body of trying to disenfranchise their voters.
Senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, appearing for the petitioners, argued that the entire exercise amounted to “citizenship screening.” He, along with advocate Sankarnarayanan, strongly objected to the exclusion of the Aadhaar card and voter ID card from the list of 11 indicative documents that residents can produce to prove their eligibility. “The entire country is going mad after Aadhaar and then ECI says that it will not be taken,” Singhvi argued.
The court also questioned the Election Commission on its decision to exclude Aadhaar from the list. The poll body’s counsel responded that Aadhaar cannot be used as proof of citizenship, a matter which the court said was the prerogative of the Home Ministry, not the EC.
The EC’s counsel urged the court not to halt the revision process and offered to present the revised voter list to the bench before it is finalized for review. “Let the revision exercise be completed. And then your lordships can look at the entire picture,” the counsel submitted.
