E-Paper
RJD, TMC MPs move SC against revision of electoral rolls in Bihar
The challenge forms the latest in the line of several petitions filed in the top court challenging the ECI’s June 24 order
Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) MP Manoj Jha has approached the Supreme Court alleging that the decision of Election Commission of India (ECI) to undertake a special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar is a tool of “institutionalised disenfranchisement” that will disproportionately target Muslim, Dalit and poor migrant communities in a state where elections are to be held later this year.
The challenge forms the latest in the line of several petitions filed in the top court challenging the ECI’s June 24 order. After non government organisation Association for Democratic Association (ADR) and political activist Yogendra Yadav filed petitions on Saturday, pleas have also been filed by Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra and NGO Peoples Union for Civil Liberties, besides Jha.
RJD, the second largest party in Bihar and the main Opposition party in the state, has opposed the SIR along with other Opposition parties.
Jha in his petition filed through advocate Fauzia Shakil said, “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.”
He added, “It (ECI order) 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.”
Moreover, since the exercise has been launched during the monsoon season in the state when many districts are affected by floods and displacement of local population, the petition questioned the meaningful participation of a large section of population.
The schedule under the June 24 order requires submission of enumeration form within 30 days, followed by filing of claims and objections and their disposal within 30 days. “It is a settled law that the burden of proving citizenship of a person lies with the state and not the person concerned. After the initiation of the present SIR process, an overwhelming majority (about 4.74 crore out of 7.9 crore on the current electoral roll) carry a disproportionately high burden of proving their citizenship with the help of proofs of date and place of birth.”
As per ECI data, Bihar has 7,89,69,844 registered voters enrolled as on June 24, 2025. The state accounts for 30% of the national per capita income as per 2021-22 and is home to the highest number of migrant workers with over 9.3 million population migrating between 2001 and 2011.
“One of the most affected classes (of the SIR exercise) are the migrant workers, many of whom despite remaining listed in the 2003 voter rolls, are unlikely to be able to return to Bihar within the stipulated time frame of 30 days to submit their enumeration forms leading to automatic deletion of their names from the electoral roll,” said the Rajya Sabha MP from Bihar.
Besides terming the ECI’s decision to be unconstitutional, Jha claimed that it is violative of Registration of Electors Rules, 1960. The SIR order and the subsequent press release empowers the electoral registration officers or such other officers to initiate a suo motu inquiry, issue notice to the proposed elector, and decide upon their inclusion in the final electoral roll, even as Rule 13(2) permits filing of claims and objections only at the instance of the affected person.
“The short deadlines make the whole process unreasonable and unworkable and has the effect of bypassing the procedure of conduct of inquiry into claims and objections as contemplated under the Rules,” the petition stated.
The petition filed by Moitra has raised similar grounds to set aside the ECI’s SIR exercise. In her petition filed through advocate Neha Rathi, the TMC MP sought a direction from the court “to restrain ECI from issuing similar orders for SIR of electoral roll in other states of the country, particularly West Bengal. Moitra claimed to have information that after Bihar, the SIT is to be replicated in West Bengal from August 2025.
She further claimed the ECI order to be “illegal” as it presumes ineligibility of a voter unless otherwise proved by way of providing documents (from a limited list of 11 documents) for self as well as documents of mother or father or both, while excluding readily available documents such as Aadhaar card, ration card, election photo identity card, or MNREGA job card.
The SIR resembles the structure and consequences of the National Register of Citizens (NRC), Moitra said, as the consequence of non-submission of documents will result in automatic exclusion from the electoral roll, without adequate procedural protection.
The petitions filed so far have unanimously critiqued the ECI’s decision to undertake SIR despite conducting a Special Summary Revision (SSR) between October 2024 and January 2025 in the state when the necessary weeding out of names based on death, migration, etc was carried out.
“ECIs decision to conduct a second revision in such a draconian manner in a poll-bound state is unjustified and unreasonable,” Moitra said.
ADR, in its petition filed on Saturday had said that the SIR violates fundamental rights under Articles 14, 19 and 21, besides other provisions of the Constitution. It said, “The SIR order 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 basic structure of the Constitution.”
