New Delhi: The Supreme Court (SC) in New Delhi stated on Tuesday that the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voting lists is the exclusive responsibility of the Election Commission of India (ECI).
The court made it clear that giving the ECI orders on how to conduct this process would be seen as interfering with its work.
During the hearing, Justice Surya Kant said, “Conducting the SIR is completely within the prerogative of the Election Commission.” The court confirmed it would not intervene in the SIR process in other states, stressing that the ECI alone is responsible for updating the electoral rolls. The case is scheduled for the next hearing on Thursday (October 9).
The bench also questioned the petitioners, with Justice Surya Kant asking why they sought the Supreme Court’s direct intervention when the Election Commission has its own effective processes. The court insisted that the judiciary must permit the ECI to carry out its duties independently.
Court Seeks Data on Excluded Bihar Voters
While refusing to interfere with the process itself, the Supreme Court has asked the ECI to provide detailed figures for the 3.66 lakh voters whose names were left out of the final electoral roll in the recent Bihar SIR exercise.
The ECI informed the court that most of the names added were new voters and only a few were old ones. They also stated that they have not received any complaints or appeals from the excluded voters so far.
Changes to Bihar’s Voter List
Earlier, the ECI published the final electoral list for the upcoming Bihar elections, showing a large change. The total number of voters fell by nearly 47 lakhs from 7.89 crore before the SIR to 7.42 crore now.
However, the final list of 7.42 crore is an increase of 17.87 lakh from the draft list of 7.24 crore released on August 1. This draft list had initially removed 65 lakh names due to issues like deaths, migration, or duplicate entries. Overall, the ECI data indicates that 21.53 lakh new voters were added to the draft list, while 3.66 lakh names were removed, resulting in the final figure.
The ECI has announced that elections for the 243-member Assembly will take place on November 6 (121 seats) and November 11 (122 seats), with the votes counted on November 14.