SC to hear pleas against EC’s decision to revise E-rolls in Bihar

The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear on July 10 a batch of petitions challenging the decision of the Election Commission to undertake special intensive revision of electoral rolls in poll-bound Bihar.
A partial working day (PWD) bench comprising Justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and Joymalya Bagchi took note of the submissions of a battery of senior lawyers led by Kapil Sibal on behalf of several petitioners and agreed to hear the pleas on Thursday.
Sibal, who appeared for RJD MP Manoj Jha, urged the bench to issue notices to the poll panel on the petitions, saying it is an impossible task to be done within the timeline (as elections are likely to be held in November).
Senior advocate Abhishek Singhvi, appearing for another petitioner, submitted that there are around eight crore voters in the state of which around four crore voters will have to submit their documents under the exercise.
“The timeline is so strict, and if by July 25 you don’t submit the documents, you will be out,” Singhvi added.
Senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, appearing for another petitioner, submitted that poll panel authorities are not accepting Aadhaar card and voter cards as documents for the exercise.
Justice Dhulia said the matter will be listed on Thursday and added that the timeline at present does not have sanctity as elections have not been notified as yet.
The bench asked the petitioners to give advance notice of their petitions to the counsel for Election Commission of India.
Several pleas, including by leaders like Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) MP Manoj Jha and Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra, have been filed in the top court challenging the Election Commission’s order directing for special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar.
Jha, in his plea filed through advocate Fauzia Shakil, said the EC’s June 24 order be quashed for being violative of Articles 14 (fundamental right to equality), 21 (fundamental right to life and liberty), 325 (no person can be excluded from electoral roll based on caste, religion and sex) and 326 (every citizen of India who has attained 18 years of age is eligible to be registered as a voter) of the Constitution.
The Rajya Sabha MP submitted that the impugned order is a tool of institutionalised disenfranchisement and “it is being used to justify aggressive and opaque revisions of electoral rolls that disproportionately target Muslim, Dalit and poor migrant communities, as such, they are not random patterns but it is engineered exclusions.”
He also sought direction to the poll body to hold the upcoming Bihar Assembly elections on the basis of the existing electoral rolls.
Jha contended that the next Bihar Assembly elections are scheduled to be held in November 2025.