The Supreme Court said on Monday that it will take up a clutch of petitions challenging the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls ordered by the Election Commission of India in poll-bound Bihar on July 10.
The petitions were mentioned before a bench of Justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and Joymalya Bagchi by senior advocates Kapil Sibal, A M Singhvi, Gopal Sankaranarayanan, and Shadan Farasat. They urged the court to list it for an urgent hearing.
The bench agreed to the request, and permitted the petitioners to give advance notice of their petitions to the Commission.
Appearing for one of the petitioners, Sibal termed it an “impossible task.” “Eight crore is the electorate and four crore have to do the enumeration,” said Singhvi, who also appeared for another petitioner.
Sankaranarayanan said, “They won’t accept Aadhaar card, voter card.”
The petitioners argued that those who do not furnish the requisite documents within the allotted time would be deleted from the rolls irrespective of whether they have voted earlier. Singhvi said, “The timeline is so strict, and by July 25 if you don’t give, you will be out”.
Justice Dhulia, however, pointed out that the timeline “doesn’t have sanctity as elections have not been notified as yet.”
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Petitions challenging the revision have been filed by RJD MP Manoj Jha, the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), activist Yogendra Yadav, and Lok Sabha MP Mahua Moitra.
In its plea, ADR said, “The SIR order dated 24.06.2025, if not set aside, can arbitrarily and without due process disenfranchise lakhs of voters from electing their representatives, thereby disrupting free and fair elections and democracy in the country, which are part of the basic structure of the Constitution.”
“The documentation requirements of the directive, lack of due process as well as the unreasonably short timeline for the … revision… further make this exercise bound to result in the removal of names of lakhs of genuine voters from electoral rolls, leading to their disenfranchisement.”
