The Supreme Court will on Thursday take up petitions challenging the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) special intensive revision of the electoral roll in poll-bound Bihar.
Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Trinamool Congress lawmakers Manoj Jha and Mahua Moitra, non-government organisations Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and Peoples Union for Civil Liberties, and political activist Yogendra Yadav have filed the pleas.
“Put up on Thursday. An advance copy of the petition be given to the respondent [ECI],” said a bench of justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and Joymalya Bagchi.
Senior advocate Kapil Sibal told the court that this is a matter of the moment that should be taken up and a notice be issued to the ECI. Senior advocate Abhishek Singhvi supported the suggestion. He said that instead of calling upon the respondent on Thursday, notice should be issued so that a stay of the revision can be taken up on that day without wasting further time. “Such a squeezed timeline has been specified with just a month given to submit the enumeration forms that will expire later this month.”
The bench said that the timelines cited do not have the sanctity as in the MS Gill decision. In cases such as MS Gill Vs Chief Election Commissioner (1978) and Lakshmi Charan Sen Vs AKM Hassan Uzzaman (1985), the court underscored that elections, once in progress, should be allowed to proceed uninterrupted to protect the democratic process.
The approach aligns with a broader principle that the judiciary’s role is to interpret the law and test its validity, not to create laws or interfere directly in legislative matters. Judicial restraint in electoral affairs has been a consistent theme in Indian jurisprudence. The Supreme Court has often invoked it in cases where parties have sought to halt elections.
{{/usCountry}}The approach aligns with a broader principle that the judiciary’s role is to interpret the law and test its validity, not to create laws or interfere directly in legislative matters. Judicial restraint in electoral affairs has been a consistent theme in Indian jurisprudence. The Supreme Court has often invoked it in cases where parties have sought to halt elections.
{{/usCountry}}The bench said elections have not been notified. “You can serve a copy even to the office of the attorney general. We will see.”
In his plea, Jha called the revision a tool of “institutionalised disenfranchisement” that will disproportionately target Muslim, Dalit, and poor migrant communities in a state, where elections are to be held before November this year, when the term of the assembly expires.
The other petitions echoed concerns about the manner and timing of the ECI in undertaking the exercise, giving 30 days for voters to provide proof of their citizenship based on a set of 11 documents, which do not include readily available ones such as Aadhaar, ECI photo identity card, or ration card.
Jha’s petition called the revision process “hasty and ill-timed”. He added that it had the effect of “disenfranchising crores of voters, thereby robbing them of their constitutional right to vote.”
“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.”
Jha noted that the exercise has been launched during the monsoon, when many districts are affected by floods and the displacement of the local population. His petition questioned the meaningful participation of a large section of the population.
On June 24, the ECI announced the revision, emphasising the need to clean the electoral roll due to rapid urbanisation, frequent migration, increasing numbers of first-time voters, non-reporting of deaths, and the inclusion of names of undocumented foreigners.
The ECI said an electoral roll revision was last held in Bihar in 2003, which covered nearly 50 million people, underlining it has a constitutional obligation to ensure that only citizens are on it. It instructed the electoral registration officers to treat the 2003 electoral roll as “probative evidence of eligibility, including presumption of citizenship unless they receive any other input otherwise.”
The voters are required to submit enumeration forms within 30 days, followed by the filing of claims and objections and their disposal within 30 days.
Jha said it is a settled law that the burden of proving the citizenship lies with the state. He added that an overwhelming majority (about 47.4 million out of 79 million 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 as of June 24, 2025. The state is the native place of the highest number of migrant workers, with over 9.3 million people migrating between 2001 and 2011.
The petitions argued that the migrant workers will be the most affected, as many of them, despite remaining listed in the 2003 voter roll, 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.
The pleas termed the ECI’s decision unconstitutional and said it is violative of the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960. The revision order and the subsequent press release empower the electoral registration officers or such other officers to initiate a suo motu inquiry. The officers can issue notices to the proposed electors 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 petitioners argued that short deadlines make the whole process unreasonable and unworkable and have the effect of bypassing the procedure of conducting of inquiry into claims and objections as contemplated under the Rules.
Moitra’s petition cited information and said the ECI has decided to undertake a similar exercise in West Bengal and sought an order to restrain it. She claimed the exercise resembles the structure and consequences of the National Register of Citizens, as the consequence of non-submission of documents will result in automatic exclusion from the electoral roll, without adequate procedural protection.
The petitions cited a Special Summary Revision between October 2024 and January 2025 in the state, when the necessary weeding out of names based on death, migration, etc, was carried out.
“The ECI’s 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, said that the special intensive revision violates fundamental rights under Articles 14, 19, and 21, and other provisions of the Constitution. It said that if not set aside, the process can arbitrarily and without due process disenfranchise tens of thousands 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.