The Voter Special Intensive Review (SIR) case in Bihar was also heard in the Supreme Court on Thursday. Meanwhile, the top court asked the Bihar State Legal Services Authority (BSLSA) to issue instructions to its district level bodies to help the 3.66 lakh voters excluded from the final voter list to file appeals with the Election Commission.
The top court also said that it expected that after the formation of parties in the case, the politicians would put forward their grievances regarding this exercise, but it seems that the political parties are satisfied with the SIR made by the Election Commission.
A bench of the country’s future CJI Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi said, “We want that everyone should be given a fair opportunity to appeal and they should have detailed orders as to why their names were not included.” There should not be a one-line esoteric order.” The bench said that the question of disposing of the appeals of the voters who were excluded from the voter list by the Election Commission after the SIR process, through an order within the stipulated time and with reasons, will be considered in the next hearing on October 16.
What was Yogendra Yadav’s argument?
Meanwhile, political activist and election analyst Yogendra Yadav argued in the Supreme Court that due to SIR in Bihar, the largest ever section of voters in the history of India has been excluded from the voter list. He alleged that 45,000 names are unclear in the final voter list published by the Commission, while house numbers of more than 4 lakh voters are written as ‘0’, raising suspicion of irregularities.
Question mark on nature of amendment
“There is still a need to amend the voter lists and no one can say that the Election Commission cannot do it because it is their duty to do so. This is a question mark on the nature of the amendment. This particular intensive amendment has weaponized a benign process. The first weapon is exclusion from the system. Next is structural exclusion and then there is the possibility of targeted exclusion,” Yogendra Yadav told the bench at the end of today’s hearing, Bar & Bench reported.
This has never happened before in history
Yadav further said that voter lists across the country are evaluated on the basis of completeness, accuracy and fairness. He told the court that we have a very serious problem on all these three aspects. He argued, “We are in favor of its completeness. Due to SIR, there has been the biggest ever reduction in the voter list. There has been a reduction of 47 lakhs. In history, this has never happened before. Look at the adult population of Bihar. These are the estimates of the expert group of the central government. In September 2025, it was 8 crore 22 lakhs. When SIR started, this number was 7.89 lakhs.”
20 percent forms were filled by BLO
Regarding the SIR conducted in Bihar, Yadav further said, “About 20 per cent of the forms are filled by booth level officers (BLOs). If this was not done, the number of people left out would not have been 65 lakh but 2 crore. But this solution may not be the case in other states.” On this, Justice Bagchi commented that most of the affluent people have turned their backs on the electoral process but people working at the grassroots level were also enthusiastic about it. Yadav also agreed to this.
In most of the cases the path of ‘genealogy’ was adopted.
Yadav further said that the Commission (ECI) has adopted the ‘pedigree’ route in most of the cases during SIR. Yadav said, “ECI did something excellent this time… They told their officers that if parents are not found, then put uncles, maternal uncles, paternal uncles, whoever is found… Will they do the same in other states? Nearly 40 per cent of the voters did not file any of the 11 documents and got included in the voter list only through genealogy.”
EC lawyers angry at Yadav
Senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, appearing for the Election Commission, objected to this argument and got angry at Yadav in the courtroom itself. He asked the judge, “What is all this? Is all this mentioned in the affidavit? This is not a lecture room to give lectures here.” He told Yadav not to give lecture on this. To this Yadav replied that the Election Commission can file an affidavit instead. He also said that as a result of Bihar SIR, 10 years of gain in sex ratio has been lost.