Bihar SIR will disenfranchise lakhs, distort voter rolls ahead of polls, ADR warns Supreme Court
Supreme Court hearing
on July 28, the
Association for Democratic Reforms
(ADR), a key petitioner challenging the
Bihar Special Intensive Revision
(SIR), has warned of the imminent exclusion of lakhs of electors ahead of the state assembly polls. ADR says this will distort the adult-to-elector ratio and vests "excessive discretionary power" in
Electoral Registration Officers
(EROs), enabling arbitrary disenfranchisement.
ADR has also argued that the Election Commission's move to seek fresh proof of citizenship from already enrolled voters violates the Supreme Court's 1995 Lal Babu Hussain ruling, which held that the onus lies only on new applicants, not existing electors.
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RJD MP Manoj Jha
, also a petitioner, has termed the exercise unconstitutional, contending that only the Centre, not the EC, has the legal authority to determine citizenship. He warned that with the final rolls due on September 30-just weeks before elections-appeals against wrongful deletions cannot be settled before polling, depriving citizens of their right to vote.
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Draft roll 'meaningless' without documents
Calling the SIR a "grave fraud" on Bihar's voters, ADR says inclusion in the draft rolls is meaningless without mandatory document submission. It has also held ECI has given' no valid reason' for exclusion of Aadhar, EPIC, and ration card from the list of documents.
Citing ground surveys, including from Bharat Jodo Abhiyan, ADR says fewer than half of Bihar's 18-40 age group hold the EC-specified eligibility documents. With polls expected in October-November, many voters either without documents or missing from the draft roll will have no time to secure inclusion. The impact of deletions will be more severe if clusters of migrant voters are concentrated in a few constituencies, ADR warns.
ERO 'unchecked discretion'
ADR also challenges the procedure for EROs, who must verify each elector's inclusion or exclusion from August 1. It says the June 24 SIR order lacks a defined process for scrutinising forms or verifying supporting documents, giving EROs "broad, unchecked discretion" and risking large-scale disenfranchisement.
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A single ERO is expected to handle forms for over three lakh people, making due diligence "humanly impossible". With little time to hear appeals before final roll publication, voters in the midst of appeals risk being excluded and losing their franchise.
Elector-adult ratio drops
ADR points to a sharp drop in Bihar's elector-to-adult population ratio-from 102% in 2019 to 97% in 2024-signalling under-enfranchisement. With Bihar's adult population projected at 8.18 crore in July 2025, maintaining the 97% ratio should yield a roll of at least 7.93 crore.
"Instead, SIR has slashed the figure further, bringing the total to just 7.24 crore. That leaves 94 lakh eligible adults off the draft
electoral rolls
," ADR's rejoinder says.
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