The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the voter list in Bihar. The court said that the number of voters in the state had reached 107% of the adult population, which made it clear that there were duplication and other irregularities in the voter list which needed to be rectified.
The case was heard by a two-judge bench of Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi. In the hearing, social activist Yogendra Yadav told that after the SIR campaign, there was a reduction of about 47 lakh voters in the voter list of Bihar. He said the state’s adult population by September 2025 was 8.22 crore, while before the launch of SIR, 7.89 crore names were registered in the list. Now the final voter list includes only 7.42 crore voters. Yadav argued that voter lists across the world are judged on the basis of completeness, uniformity and accuracy, and this lack calls the list into question.
Justice Bagchi made it clear that from 2014 to 2022, the number of voters in Bihar remained more than the adult population, which had reached 107%. He said that this is a clear indication that there were errors in the list, which needed to be removed.
Yogendra Yadav admitted that this was a problem in the initial years, but it had improved by 2023. He said that the SIR campaign has now become a “remedy” that is given after the patient recovers. He accused the Election Commission that the process involved three types of boycott: systematic boycott (names of those who did not fill the forms on time were removed), structural boycott (applications were rejected due to lack of required documents) and targeted boycott (removal of names in the name of citizenship check).
Senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, appearing for the Election Commission, said that those whose names have been removed can still appeal. The Supreme Court, in an interim order, directed the Bihar State Legal Services Authority to activate all the district level legal services committees. Paralegal volunteers and lawyers providing free legal aid will have to go from village to village to help people and inform them about their rights. The next hearing on this matter will be on October 16.
The Election Commission also said that the main petitioner organization ADR falsely claimed that a person’s name was in the draft list and later withdrew it. Taking note of this, the court said that making this false claim in the affidavit comes under “perjury”. Experts say that this matter is not limited to Bihar only, but can become an important example for the transparency and credibility of the voter list in the entire country.