Supreme Court finds Bihar's SIR ‘actually inclusive’ and ‘voter friendly’ despite exclusion of Aadhaar — Here's why

The Supreme Court said on Wednesday that Bihar's special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral roll was “voter friendly” given that the 11 documents required to be submitted by an elector as opposed to only seven documents in summary revision conducted previously.

The remarks were made by a bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi as they resumed the hearing on a batch of pleas challenging the Election Commission's June 24 decision to conduct the SIR exercise in poll-bound Bihar.

Hearing the petitions, the bench observed that contrary to the petitioners' arguments that non-acceptance of Aadhaar was exclusionary, the large number of acceptable documents show that the SIR was “actually inclusionary”.

“The number of documents in summary revision conducted earlier in the state was seven and in SIR it is 11, which shows it is voter friendly. We understand your arguments that non-acceptance of Aadhaar is exclusionary but a high number of documents is actually inclusionary,” the bench said.

The SC noted that electors are required to submit any one of the 11 documents mentioned by the EC to prove citizenship.

Petitioners argue over SIR

Appearing for the petitioners, senior advocate Abhishek Singhvi disagreed with the Supreme Court's observation and said that the number of required documents may be high but had the least coverage.

The advocate cited an example of passport availability with the electors and said that only one or two per cent of citizens in Bihar held the documents and they have no provision for permanent resident certificates given in the state.

“If we see the availability of documents with the population in Bihar it can be seen the coverage is very low,” Singhvi said.

However, the bench argued that Bihar has a coverage of 36 lakh passport holders, which seems to be good.

“The list of documents is prepared normally after taking feedback from various government departments to ensure maximum coverage,” Justice Bagchi noted.

On August 12, the top court said inclusion and exclusion of citizens or non-citizens from the electoral rolls was within the remit of the Election Commission and backed its stand to not accept Aadhaar and voter cards as conclusive proof of citizenship in the SIR of voters' list in Bihar.