Supreme Court Adjourns Hearings on Bihar SIR Till October 7
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday (September 15) adjourned the hearings on petitions challenging the Election Commission of India's 'special intensive revision' (SIR) of voter rolls till October 1.
A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi is hearing the matter. Petitioners had asked for a hearing date before October 1, since that is when the final voter rolls prepared under the SIR are set to be published, but the court cited the Dussehra break starting on September 28 to decline.
Advocates for the petitioners said that it is likely that the Bihar elections will be announced in mid-October, since they are to be held in November. This meant that the court had a limited amount of time to intervene effectively.
The judges noted that the publication of the voter rolls will not affect the court's judgment. "What difference will it (the final publication of the list) make to us? If we are satisfied there is some illegality, we can [still intervene]," Justice Kant said, according to LiveLaw.
The Aadhaar card, which, according to the Unique Identification Authority of India’s own website, serves as a “proof of identity and proof of address for residents of India” was excluded from the list of 11 documents that the Election Commission permitted for the revision of electoral rolls in Bihar, leaving voters scrambling for documents as they feared mass exclusion.
Last week, the ECI finally directed the chief electoral officer, Bihar to accept Aadhaar as proof of identity while preparing voter rolls. This direction came after the Supreme Court insisted upon it in multiple hearings, and the ECI tried its best to sidestep this measure. On Monday, the bench considered an application filed by advocate Ashwini Upadhyay asking the court to reconsider its order telling ECI to add Aadhaar to the list of documents. Upadhyay has filed a petition seeking nationwide SIR.
"Aadhaar is simply proof of identity. It is not proof of citizenship, not proof of age, not proof of residence etc. Aadhaar cannot be equated with the 12 documents," Upadhyay said, while also arguing that people may have forged Aadhaar cards.
On August 1, the ECI had published a draft roll which excluded a total of 65 lakh electors, without releasing the names of the electors. The petitioners in top court had demanded that ECI make this list public, to which the poll body had resisted saying that “no such list can be sought by the petition as a matter of right”.
On August 14, however, the Supreme Court asked the commission to make the list available on its website and in public, along with the reasons for their exclusion. The top court had also asked the poll body to accept Aadhaar from people making claims and objections regarding the draft rolls.
The Association for Democratic Reforms, one of the petitioners in the case, also sought an extension of the deadline for voters to file statements and objections for the Bihar SIR, which the ECI in court clarified was to be accepted. The initial deadline for filing objections was September 1, 2025.
As the election process comes under scrutiny, read The Wire‘s coverage of the Bihar SIR, the opposition’s allegations and more, here.
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