The Supreme Court asked the Election Commission to provide details of 3.66 lakh excluded voters from Bihar’s final electoral roll after the Special Intensive Revision exercise. Congress criticized the EC over transparency, accuracy, and fairness of the process
Opposition leaders had earlier protested against Election Commission’s special intensive revision. FILE PIC
The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the Election Commission (EC) to provide it with the details of 3.66 lakh excluded voters from the final electoral roll prepared after Bihar’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise. The EC informed the apex court that most of the names added are of new voters and that no complaint or appeal has been filed till now by any excluded voter.
A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi said the poll panel will submit whatever information it gets on excluded voters by Thursday (October 9), when it will conduct further hearing. The top court said everyone has the draft electoral roll and the final list has also been published on September 30, so the required data can be furnished through a comparative analysis.
The bench said that since it appears from the number of electors in the final list that there is an appreciation of numbers from the draft rolls, therefore, to avoid any confusion, the identity of add-ons should be disclosed.
Dwivedi replied that most additions of names are of new voters and there were a few old voters, whose names were added after the draft roll was published. On September 30, the EC, while publishing the final electoral list of the poll-bound Bihar, said that the total number of electors has come down by nearly 47 lakh to 7.42 crore in the final electoral roll from 7.89 crore before the SIR.
The final figure has, however, increased by 17.87 lakh from 7.24 crore electors named in the draft list issued on August 1, which had removed 65 lakh voters from the original list. 17.87 lakh new electors have been added to the draft list.
Congress slams EC over SIR
The Congress on Tuesday said the Election Commission has not had the integrity or the courage to say on how many non-citizens in Bihar were removed from the voter list published by it.
Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh shared on X an analysis of the SIR exercise published in a newspaper which claimed that although Supreme Court interventions allayed fears of mass disenfranchisement, the exercise has left much to be desired from the standpoint of accuracy, equity, transparency and fairness.
“This fine analysis shows that the entire SIR exercise bulldozed through by the Election Commission has failed on all three counts of completeness, equity, and accuracy,” Ramesh said.
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