Another chance: On Bihar’s Special Intensive Revision exercise and the Supreme Court order  

The Supreme Court of India’s September 1, 2025 order on Bihar’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise offers a crucial lifeline to voters who found themselves wrongfully excluded from the draft electoral rolls. The Court’s ruling and the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) clarification that claims and objections can continue to be filed even after the deadline, represent a welcome move in an exercise that has raised questions about transparency and fairness. The ECI has confirmed that applications submitted after September 1, 2025 will be considered after the electoral roll is finalised, with the process continuing until the last date for filing of nominations. This ensures that inclusions and exclusions can be integrated into the final roll, providing excluded voters with a meaningful opportunity for redress through their Aadhaar card. However, the ECI’s numbers raise a curious question. While over 15 lakh new voters registered using Form 6, only around 33,000 claims were filed for re-inclusion of the approximately 65 lakh excluded names. This large difference becomes even more concerning when one considers that both categories use Form 6, potentially leading to conflation in the data presented to the Court. This data confusion feeds into a broader dispute between the ECI and political parties. While the ECI claims, using its daily data reports, that parties failed to assist excluded voters, parties contend that they did raise claims, but these were not properly processed by Block Level Officers.

Recognising these challenges, the Court has wisely directed that the Bihar State Legal Services Authority use para-legal volunteers to assist voters and political parties. The Court’s intervention appears to reflect concerns that mirror data-driven investigations, including by The Hindu, which have identified unusual patterns in the exclusion lists, pointing to anomalies. Ground reports further validate these findings, underscoring the need for robust corrective measures. The onus is on political parties to rise above narrow self-interest and actively assist genuinely excluded voters. The democratic process demands such civic responsibility from all stakeholders. For the next steps, the ECI must recognise Aadhaar as a valid standalone document to prevent unfair exclusions among the 99.5% of those in the draft roll who have already submitted documentation and the rest. Given that Aadhaar serves as sufficient proof for the excluded to file claims, it should logically suffice for those already on the draft roll. The Bihar SIR experience offers lessons for future electoral roll revisions. The ECI must abandon its technocratic, short deadline-driven approach in favour of intensive revisions spread over longer periods, allowing thorough door-to-door verification. A clean electoral roll cannot be achieved through hurried exercises that prioritise administrative convenience over voter rights.