NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear challenges by Congress and and 10 other opposition parties , including DMK and NCP (Sharad Pawar), to the Election Commission 's decision for special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar.
Appearing before a bench of Justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and Joymalya Bagchi, senior advocates Kapil Sibal, A M Singhvi and Gopal Sankarnarayanan pleaded to the court to grant an urgent hearing as the revision process had already started and lakhs would be disenfranchised if the exercise was not stayed. They said the squeezed timeline fixed by the EC was impractical and it was impossible to complete the process in such a short span of time. After a brief hearing, the apex court agreed to examine their plea and posted it for Thursday (July 10).
Bihar elections are likely to be held in November.
The petitions have been filed on behalf of Congress, NCP (Sharad Pawar), CPI, CPM, CPI (ML), DMK, SP, Shiv Sena (UBT), JMM and RJD. Besides, TMC MP Mahua Moitra, NGOs - Association for Democratic Reforms and People's Union for Civil Liberties - and a few residents of Bihar have also filed petitions against the EC's drive.
The petitioners took the identical stand that the timeline fixed by EC was not practical and would lead to disenfranchisement of lakhs of voters, particularly migrant workers and people from marginalised communities who do not have requisite documents and may not be able to procure it within the short span fixed by EC.
Congress general secretary KC Venugopal posted on X: “It (SIR) has wreaked havoc across villages and towns of Bihar — giving crores of voters anxiety about whether their right to vote will be stolen. This is mass-scale rigging and mischief being carried out by EC, under instructions from ruling regime.”
RJD MP Manoj Jha sought direction to EC to conduct the forthcoming polls in Bihar on the basis of the existing electoral rolls. Though at present SIR is confined to Bihar, parties apprehend that it could be replicated in other states too. Moitra urged SC to restrain EC for undertaking such an exercise.
“The impugned order is discriminatory, unreasonable and manifestly arbitrary and violates Articles 14, 21, 325 and 326. The order is a tool of institutionalised disenfranchisement. It is submitted that 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. The present SIR process is not only hasty and ill-timed, but has the effect of disenfranchising crores of voters, thereby robbing them of their constitutional right to vote. Moreover, this exercise has been launched during monsoon season in Bihar, when many districts are affected by floods and local population is displaced, thereby making it difficult and almost impossible for a large section of population to meaningfully participate in the process,” Jha said in his plea.
Seeking the court’s direction to set aside the EC’s order, Moitra in her petition, filed through advocate Neha Rathi, submitted that the order unlawfully shifted the burden of proving eligibility from the state to the individual elector and arbitrarily excludes commonly accepted identity documents such as Aadhaar and ration cards.
PUCL, in its petition through advocate Talha Abdul Rahman, questioned EC’s timing, alleging Bihar’s massive migrant population faces systematic exclusion as workers lacking local address proofs struggle with complex procedures from distant locations, possibly missing compressed timelines due to work commitments.
Appearing before a bench of Justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and Joymalya Bagchi, senior advocates Kapil Sibal, A M Singhvi and Gopal Sankarnarayanan pleaded to the court to grant an urgent hearing as the revision process had already started and lakhs would be disenfranchised if the exercise was not stayed. They said the squeezed timeline fixed by the EC was impractical and it was impossible to complete the process in such a short span of time. After a brief hearing, the apex court agreed to examine their plea and posted it for Thursday (July 10).
Bihar elections are likely to be held in November.
The petitions have been filed on behalf of Congress, NCP (Sharad Pawar), CPI, CPM, CPI (ML), DMK, SP, Shiv Sena (UBT), JMM and RJD. Besides, TMC MP Mahua Moitra, NGOs - Association for Democratic Reforms and People's Union for Civil Liberties - and a few residents of Bihar have also filed petitions against the EC's drive.
The petitioners took the identical stand that the timeline fixed by EC was not practical and would lead to disenfranchisement of lakhs of voters, particularly migrant workers and people from marginalised communities who do not have requisite documents and may not be able to procure it within the short span fixed by EC.
Congress general secretary KC Venugopal posted on X: “It (SIR) has wreaked havoc across villages and towns of Bihar — giving crores of voters anxiety about whether their right to vote will be stolen. This is mass-scale rigging and mischief being carried out by EC, under instructions from ruling regime.”
RJD MP Manoj Jha sought direction to EC to conduct the forthcoming polls in Bihar on the basis of the existing electoral rolls. Though at present SIR is confined to Bihar, parties apprehend that it could be replicated in other states too. Moitra urged SC to restrain EC for undertaking such an exercise.
“The impugned order is discriminatory, unreasonable and manifestly arbitrary and violates Articles 14, 21, 325 and 326. The order is a tool of institutionalised disenfranchisement. It is submitted that 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. The present SIR process is not only hasty and ill-timed, but has the effect of disenfranchising crores of voters, thereby robbing them of their constitutional right to vote. Moreover, this exercise has been launched during monsoon season in Bihar, when many districts are affected by floods and local population is displaced, thereby making it difficult and almost impossible for a large section of population to meaningfully participate in the process,” Jha said in his plea.
Seeking the court’s direction to set aside the EC’s order, Moitra in her petition, filed through advocate Neha Rathi, submitted that the order unlawfully shifted the burden of proving eligibility from the state to the individual elector and arbitrarily excludes commonly accepted identity documents such as Aadhaar and ration cards.
PUCL, in its petition through advocate Talha Abdul Rahman, questioned EC’s timing, alleging Bihar’s massive migrant population faces systematic exclusion as workers lacking local address proofs struggle with complex procedures from distant locations, possibly missing compressed timelines due to work commitments.
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