The Supreme Court on Tuesday directed the Election Commission to provide the details of the 3.6 lakh voters whose names were deleted after the publication of the draft electoral roll in Bihar amid the special intensive revision of the list, reported PTI.

The draft rolls were published on August 1 with the names of 7.24 crore voters – 65 lakh short of the 7.89 crore voters who were in the roll before the exercise began.

The Election Commission then started a process of adding and deleting voters from this draft roll. Between August 1 and September 30, it added 21.5 lakh voters and deleted 3.6 lakh voters, showed the final roll.

On Tuesday, a bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymlaya Bagchi said that everybody had a right to appeal against their exclusion from the list. But a solution cannot be devised if the court is not told about the persons whose names were deleted without them being sent a communication, it added.

“If anyone can give us a list that out of these 3.6 lakh voters these are the people to whom orders have not been communicated,” Bar and Bench quoted the court as observing. “We will direct them [Election Commission] to communicate. Each individual has a right to appeal.”

The court has been hearing a batch of petitions against the revision of the electoral rolls in Bihar, which was announced by the Election Commission on June 24. As part of the exercise, persons whose names were not on the 2003 voter list needed to submit proof of eligibility to vote.

On September 30, Election Commission data showed that at least 47 lakh voters in Bihar had been excluded from the final electoral roll.

During the hearing on Tuesday, advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, representing one of the petitioners, told the court that nobody among the 3.6 lakh names deleted had received a notice about it or a reason for the action.

However, advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, representing the Election Commission, said that every person who had been deleted from the list had been given the order.

The petitioners also said that while about 21 lakh voters were added to the final voters list after around 65 lakh were deleted from the draft list, it was not clear whether the ones added back were initially removed or whether they were new names.

“Final list appears to be an appreciation of numbers,” Bar and Bench quoted the court as saying. “It has gone up from 65. Now there is a confusion. What is the identity of this add on? Is it an add on of the deleted names or add on of independent new names?”

In response, the poll panel’s counsel said that most of them were new voters.

The bench then said that the poll panel could provide the court with this data.

Advocate Prashant Bhushan, representing one of the petitioners, said that the poll panel could easily submit this data, but it would be difficult for each affected person to come before the court.

Bhushan added that the data on the deletions and additions must be uploaded on the website, Bar and Bench reported.

“The draft list is already published,” Bar and Bench quoted Dwivedi as saying. “…Till today, nobody has filed an appeal or complaint. It’s just [non-profit organisations] ADR [Association for Democratic Reforms], PUCL [People’s Union for Civil Liberties] etc, they are not concerned with the elections.”

He added that the Assembly elections in Bihar had been scheduled in two phases – on November 6 and November 11.

The Election Commission had announced the dates on Monday.

“We borrow staff from states [for the elections],” Dwivedi said. “None of the petitions have been amended. There is no challenge. But they want data. Data for what?”

The court said that somebody must file an affidavit saying that they had been affected.

In response, Bhushan said that this affidavit would be filed while also noting that all those affected cannot approach the court.

The court added: “The question of probing so much will arise when the are some genuine people. At least 100-200 people saying that they want to file an appeal but no order has come to them.”

The bench directed the poll panel to submit whatever information it had on excluded voters by Thursday, when it will hear the pleas next, PTI reported.

Earlier this month, the court directed the Election Commission to accept Aadhaar cards as a valid identity proof for the special intensive revision.

The Aadhaar card was not among the 11 documents that the poll panel had said could be submitted as proof of citizenship. Several petitioners had objected to the exclusion of Aadhaar, the most widely held ID, from the list of permissible documents, calling it “absurd”.

The court had earlier said that the entire exercise could be set aside if it was found to be illegal.

The Election Commission has defended the voter roll revision as a clean-up exercise to remove names of the deceased, duplicate entries and undocumented migrants ahead of the elections.

A Scroll analysis of the data published by the Election Commission on August 1 showed that women made up 55% of voters who were excluded from Bihar’s draft voter list after the revision.

It also showed that five of the state’s 10 districts with the largest share of Muslim population had the highest number of excluded voters.

Also read: Why exclusion of women voters in Bihar should worry Nitish Kumar

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