New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear on July 10 a batch of petitions challenging the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) directive to carry out a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in poll-bound Bihar.A bench of Justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and Joymalya Bagchi allowed the listing of the matter on Thursday and permitted the petitioners to give advance notice to the Election Commission and serve copies of the pleas.Senior advocates Kapil Sibal, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Gopal Sankaranarayanan, and Shadan Farasat mentioned the matter before the court. They told the bench that voters failing to submit the required documents risk deletion from the electoral roll, even if they have consistently voted for decades.The petitions were filed by Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) MP Manoj Jha, the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), activist Yogendra Yadav, Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra, and former Bihar MLA Mujahid Alam.The petitioners sought to quash the ECI’s June 24 order, which mandates large groups of voters in Bihar to provide proof of citizenship to remain on the electoral rolls.ADR’s petition argued that the order imposes new documentation burdens on voters and unfairly shifts the burden of proof from the state to citizens. It raised alarm over the exclusion of commonly held documents like Aadhaar and ration cards, noting that the move would disproportionately affect the poor and marginalised, especially rural voters.”The SIR order, if not set aside, can arbitrarily and without due process disenfranchise lakhs of voters from electing their representatives, thereby disrupting free and fair elections and democracy in the country, which are part of the basic structure of the Constitution,” the petition stated.RJD MP Manoj Jha further argued that the move, introduced without consulting political parties, is being used to justify aggressive and opaque revisions of electoral rolls. He alleged that these revisions disproportionately target Muslim, Dalit, and migrant communities, suggesting the exclusions are systematic rather than random.
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