Supreme Court asks EC to furnish details of 65 lakh deleted voters in Bihar draft electoral rolls

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday asked the Election Commission to file its response to a plea seeking reasons for leaving out 65 lakh voters in Bihar during the Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls.

The court also asked the Election Commission to provide details of those 65 lakh voters.

A bench of Justices Surya Kant, Ujjal Bhuyan and N Kotiswar Singh asked the Election Commission's counsel to furnish by August 9, the details of deleted voters, already shared with the political parties, and give a copy to the NGO, Association For Democratic Reforms.

The NGO, which has challenged the June 24 order of the EC for Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in Bihar, filed a fresh application seeking direction to the poll panel to publish the names of around 65 lakh deleted voters with the mention whether they are dead, permanently migrated or not considered for any other reason.

The bench told advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for the NGO, that the reason for deletion would come in subsequent time as it is now only a draft list.

However, Bhushan contended that some political parties have been given a list of deleted voters but they have not further clarified whether the said voter is dead or migrated.

The EC's counsel that they would place on record that it had shared the information with the political parties representatives.

"We will see every voter likely to be affected and get the required information. You (EC) file a reply by Saturday and let Bhushan look at it and then we can see what is disclosed and what is not disclosed," the bench told the EC counsel.

Bhushan claimed that 75 per cent of voters, who have filled the enumeration form have not furnished any supporting documents mentioned in the list of 11 documents and their names were included on the recommendation of Booth Level Officer (BLO) of the poll panel.

The court said it would hear the batch of petitions challenging the June 24 order of the poll panel on August 12 and the NGO can make those averments on that day.

On July 29, the Supreme Court said it was monitoring the process of Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in Bihar as a judicial authority, and it would immediately step in if there was mass exclusion of voters.

The court sought to allay the apprehension of petitioners, who contended as many as 65 lakh voters have been excluded on the ground that either they are dead or have permanently shifted their place of residence.

Fixing the date of hearing on August 12 and 13 on the batch of petitions, the court then said, it would first hear them on their apprehension of the draft list, published on August 1.

On July 28, 2025, the Supreme Court said, instead of en masse exclusion of voters, en masse inclusion should be the goal of the Election Commission as it again suggested the poll panel to include Aadhaar and Voter ID cards as valid documents in the Special intensive Revision of electoral rolls being undertaken in Bihar.

The top court, however, refused to restrain the Election Commission from publishing draft voters list on August 1, 2025.

The court had also clarified that the court can strike down the entire process if any illegality was found.