NOTING A SUBMISSION of the Election Commission of India (‘ECI’) that claims and objections to the Bihar draft electoral rolls will be considered even after the September 1 deadline and even after final publication of rolls, the Supreme court on Monday directed the Bihar Legal Services Authority (‘BLSA’) to instruct all district legal services authorities to depute or notify para-legal volunteers for assisting voters and political parties in online submission of claims, objections and corrections.
The bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi, taking this on record, directed the BLSA to instruct all district legal services authorities to depute or notify para-legal volunteers for assisting voters and political parties in online submission of claims, objections and corrections.
Taking on record the ECI’s assurance that the process of claims and objections would remain open until the last date of nominations and all inclusions or exclusions would be integrated in the final roll, a bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi, refrained from passing any order on the plea by the Rashtriya Janata Dal (‘RJD’) and others seeking a two-week extension till September 15, 2025, for filing claims, objections and corrections.
The top Court directed that each para-legal volunteer would submit a confidential report to the District and Sessions Judge, who is also the Chairman of the District Legal Services Authority (‘DLSA’), and the compiled inputs would be forwarded to the State Legal Services Authority.
During the hearing, senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, appearing for the poll panel, submitted that apart from RJD and CPI(M), no political party had assisted voters in filing objections. He pointed out that objections being filed by political parties largely sought deletion of names rather than inclusion.
Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for the NGO Association for Democratic Reforms (‘ADR’), accused the ECI of not following its own manual, stating, “The problem really is in the lack of transparency.” Dwivedi shot back, “Problem is in the mindset, which is to disrupt.”
On August 22, the Supreme Court had permitted those excluded from the draft rolls during the Special Intensive Revision (‘SIR’) in poll-bound Bihar to apply for inclusion online, ruling that physical submission of forms was not mandatory. The Court directed that individuals could apply themselves or with the assistance of booth-level agents (‘BLAs’) of political parties, and that political parties must direct their workers to assist people in filing the requisite forms with any of 11 documents, including Aadhaar, for inclusion.
The Court also mandated that BLAs of all political parties make efforts to facilitate the nearly 65 lakh persons left out of the draft rolls, except those who are dead or who have migrated voluntarily, to file their objections by the September 1 cutoff.
The Election Commission had earlier, by an affidavit, informed the Court that the names of 65 lakh electors not included in the draft roll published on August 1 had been posted on the websites of all 38 District Electoral Officers. The list included reasons for non-inclusion such as death, shifting of residence, or duplicate entries.
The affidavit was filed in compliance with the Court’s August 14 direction to publish a booth-wise list of all such electors during the ongoing SIR exercise.
The controversy arises from the ECI’s June 24, 2025 SIR order, issued for Bihar ahead of state polls, which sought to cleanse the rolls by requiring birth-based proof of citizenship. The directive excluded Aadhaar as conclusive proof, in line with the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling that Aadhaar establishes identity but not citizenship.
Petitioners fear that such timing and documentation requirements could result in large-scale disenfranchisement, particularly of rural, marginalised and vulnerable groups.
The petitions challenging the ECI’s decision were filed by RJD MP Manoj Jha, ADR, PUCL, activist Yogendra Yadav, Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra, and former Bihar MLA Mujahid Alam.
