The bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi said they would on July 29 fix the schedule for conducting a final hearing on the matter.

The Supreme Court on Monday refused to put an interim stay on the publishing of draft electoral rolls in Bihar, with Assembly elections in the state slated to be held soon.

While passing the order, the SC said it would once for all decide the pleas against the Election Commission of India's (ECI) special intensive revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls.

The bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi said they would on July 29 fix the schedule for conducting a final hearing on the matter.

Appearing for NGO Association for Democratic Reforms, Senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan submitted before court that the electoral rolls should not be finalised in the interim, and asked for a stay on publishing them on August 1.

The bench observed that the last order passed by the top court noted the petitioners not pressing for interim stay. Replying to this, Sankaranarayanan said the interim relief of stay was not pressed because of SC's assurance that the matter would be listed for hearing before August 1.

However, the bench said that the stay could not be granted now and the pleas would be decided once for all.

“Don't undermine the power of the court. Trust us,” the bench said, adding that if court was in agreement with the submissions and if any illegality was found, everything would be quashed “there and then”.

SC asks EC to continue accepting Aadhaar, voter cards

Meanwhile, the SC also asked the EC to continue accepting Aadhaar cards and voter IDs for the SIR in Bihar and comply with its order stating that these documents had a “presumption of genuineness”.

The top court reiterated the July 10 order by a bench headed by Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia, which had asked the poll body to consider Aadhaar, voter and ration cards as valid documents.

“As far as ration cards are concerned we can say they can be forged easily but Aadhaar and voter cards have some sanctity and have presumption of genuineness,” the bench said.