ADR has said that the draft electoral rolls in their current shape 'serve no purpose' and 'cannot be used to cross check any details from the ground in absence of the reason for such deletion.'

The Association for Democratic Reforms, one of the petitioners in the Supreme Court who have challenged the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in Bihar has appealed to the Election Commission of India to release the list of the 65 lakhs voters who have been excluded from the list after the first phase of the exercise. Following ADR’s appeal, the Supreme Court has asked the ECI to file a response by August 9.

The Election Commission released its first draft of revised electoral rolls in Bihar on August 1, 2025. The list, according to the ECI, has dropped the names of 65 lakh voters, out of whom 22 lakh voters were declared deceased, 36 lakh permanently shifted or not found, and seven lakh duplicated in multiple places. 

The ADR, in a Right to Information application to the ECI’s information officer Kumar Rajeev, sought information under Section 6(1) of the Right to Information Act, 2005 to release “a detailed assembly-wise” list of the total 65 lakh names. 

The ECI had uploaded the draft rolls on August 1, but it does not contain an assembly-wise break up of the excluded names. It also claimed to have shared the list with all political parties in Bihar’s poll fray. However, the ADR and some other political parties have said that the information shared by the ECI does not contain a comprehensible list in which one can check the excluded names properly, as it only contains consolidated electoral rolls. Instead, they argue that an assembly-wise list that contains the names of voters in all booths will help them compare the current list with previous rolls and verify the authenticity of the process better.

The ADR has now sought information of an assembly-wise list that is “segregated by the names of those who are deceased, have permanently shifted/not found and those who are enrolled in multiple places in electoral rolls”. 

The ADR has also sought information on “constituency-wise names of those who had not filled in the enumeration form till July 25, 2025” and also the electoral rolls published on January 6, 2025 after completion of the Special Summary Revision 2025 that happened between June 2024 and January 2025 for a better comparative picture.  

Apart from these, the ADR has also asked the ECI on which documents it relied upon to categorise the excluded 65 lakh names as “deceased”, “permanently shifted” or “duplicates”. 

It has also asked for “copies of any official circulars, orders, or guidelines” issued by the ECI or its officials on the deletion criteria and verification process. It sought information on whether notices have been issued to affected voters whose names have been removed from the list as per the provision in the law. “Please provide a copy of the standard format of the notice and statistics on how many were issued and responded to,” the ADR in its RTI application asked. 

It also sought information on whether there were any hearings conducted by the Electoral Registration Officers before finalising the total deletions from the draft electoral rolls in the SIR exercise.

ADR’s court application

An urgent Application for Direction was moved by the ADR at the Supreme Court seeking the same information, following which Justice Surya Kant today asked the ECI to file a response by August 9, 2025. Justice Kant said that the ECI’s detailed response can then be checked by ADR’s counsel Prashant Bhushan. He said that the Supreme Court will hear the matter on August 12, 2025. 

Although the ECI has argued that the draft electoral rolls were shared with political parties to check, ADR’s court application reiterated that the ECI has not mentioned the names of the deleted voters in the draft electoral rolls, and has just mentioned that 65 lakh voters have been deleted. It said that the draft electoral rolls in their current shape “serve no purpose” and “cannot be used to cross check any details from the ground in absence of the reason for such deletion.”  

“It is submitted that the list with names of 65 lakh deleted electors curiously fails to disclose the reason of non-submission of their enumeration forms, an information that the Election Commission evidently possesses,” the ADR said in its application to the apex court. 

“ECI’s concealment of reason for deletion against each name in the list of 65 lakh electors seems to be an attempt to obviate the general public including the petitioners from ascertaining whether or not electors whose names figure in the said list are indeed dead or permanently migrated,” the application argued.

“It is to be noted that as per the Election Commission, those whose names do not figure in the draft roll stand do not enjoy the right to routine legal remedies (notice, personal hearing and appeals) available under Section 21A of the Registration of Voters Rules They do not have the option of participating in the process of claims and objections and thus are at the biggest risk of disenfranchisement,” the ADR added.