Publish district-wise list of 65 lakh deleted voters in Bihar draft rolls with reasons: SC tells EC

The Supreme Court on Thursday directed the Election Commission to publish a district-wise list of around 65 lakh voters whose names were deleted from the draft electoral roll after the special intensive revision exercise in Bihar, Live Law reported.

The list should be displayed on the websites of the state’s district electoral officers and chief electoral officer, the court said.

The court said the poll body must also state the reason for each deletion, such as death, migration or double registration.

Sharing the list as well as the reasons for deletions will improve “voter confidence” in the institution, the Supreme Court added.

A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi passed the directions in response to petitions challenging the voter roll revision in Bihar ahead of the Assembly elections, expected in October or November.

The draft roll published on August 1 showed that 65.6 lakh names were removed from the list. Of these, 22 lakh were due to deaths, 36 lakh were of people who had permanently shifted or were untraceable and seven lakh were duplicate entries, the Election Commission had said then.

During the hearing on Thursday, Kant said that the poll body should issue a “layman-friendly” notice informing the public where they can find the list of deleted voters and name the website, Live Law reported.

“If Poonam Devi has been omitted, Poonam Devi must be able to know that she has been deleted and why she has been deleted,” the judge said.

Kant added that the documents should be searchable based on Elector Photo Identity Card numbers.

Scroll had reported on Saturday that the Election Commission had replaced the digital draft voter lists in Bihar with scanned images of the voter lists on its official websites.

The digital draft lists are machine-readable and easier to analyse for errors and patterns on a large scale. The scanned versions make this process harder.

On Thursday, the court also directed the Election Commission to specify in public notices that the excluded persons, at the time of submitting their claims for inclusion in the final list, can also furnish their Aadhaar cards.

“Your list of 11 documents seems citizen-friendly, but Aadhaar and EPIC [Electoral Photo Identity Card] are readily available,” Live Law quoted Bagchi as saying. “Your notice can say that those who have not submitted [their claims] so far, they can submit their Aadhaar and EPIC also.”

These two documents were not among the poll body’s 11 accepted proofs of identity. 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 has directed the Election Commission to take these steps by Tuesday.

Bihar voter roll revision

The revision of the electoral rolls in Bihar 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.

Voters born before July 1, 1987, were required to show proof of their date and place of birth, while those born between July 1, 1987, and December 2, 2004, had to also submit documents establishing the date and place of birth of one of their parents.

Those born after December 2, 2004, needed proof of date of birth for themselves and both parents.

The draft voter list, published on August 1, comprises electors who submitted their enumeration forms to the poll panel between June 24 and July 26.

They will now have to produce proof of citizenship to make it to the final list that will be published on September 30.

Also read

• Higher exclusion of Hindus than Muslims in Bihar draft roll, shows Scroll analysis

• EC replaces digital draft voter lists in Bihar with scanned images that make finding errors harder