SC orders transparency in Bihar SIR; EC lists 65 lakh excluded voters

The Supreme Court has insisted on transparency in Bihar’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, directing the Election Commission to publicly display the names of about 6.5 million voters who were removed, along with the reasons for their noninclusion. The Election Commission complied within the court-ordered deadline, posting booth-by-booth lists on district websites and preparing an online, EPIC-based searchable format to let citizens see who was excluded and why. The development comes as Bihar, one of the country’s most closely watched electoral battlegrounds, awaits assembly elections later this year and as petitions challenge the legality and fairness of the SIR process.

Context for the move is clear: the draft rolls published on August 1 showed 7.93 crore registered voters, but the SIR identified about 65 lakh ineligible or excluded names. Of these, roughly 22 lakh were listed as dead, about 36 lakh as permanently shifted or absent, and around 7 lakh as duplicates. The numbers have prompted concerns that legitimate voters could be disenfranchised, a charge that has fueled political debate and protests. The Supreme Court’s interim order had required the EC...