The Supreme Court, in an interim order on Thursday, August 14, 2025, directed the Election Commission of India (ECI) to publish an enumerated, booth-wise list of approximately 65 lakh electors who were not included in the draft electoral roll published on August 1 during the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise in poll-bound Bihar. The Court said the reasons for deletion, such as death, migration, or double registration, should be specified.
A Bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi instructed that the list must contain the individual reasons — death, migration, untraceability, or duplicate registrations — for each exclusion, and that it should be displayed on the website of the Chief Electoral Officer of Bihar. The documents are to be searchable by EPIC numbers.
The Court further directed that public notices should clearly state that excluded persons, when submitting claims for inclusion in the final list, may also furnish their Aadhaar cards.
Wide publicity is to be given through newspapers, electronic media, and social media about the list’s publication on the website.
The ECI has been asked to comply with these directions by next Tuesday. The order came on an application filed by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), which sought the publication of the omitted voters’ list with reasons. The ECI opposed the request, arguing there was no legal mandate for such publication.
The bench observed that disclosing the list along with reasons would improve “voter confidence” in the institution. It also directed the ECI to add the Aadhaar card to its list of 11 acceptable documents for voter identification and to give wide publicity to this inclusion.
The revision exercise in Bihar has been challenged by leaders of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), the Congress, and the ADR.
(With inputs from agencies)
