YOGENDRA YADAV BRINGS TWO VOTERS MARKED AS DEAD BY ECI TO SUPREME COURT, CALLS BIHAR SIR A MASS DELETION DRIVE:

In the Supreme Court proceedings challenging the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of Bihar’s electoral rolls, political activist Yogendra Yadav appeared with two individuals allegedly declared dead in the ECI’s draft rolls. A Bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi heard the matter and will continue the hearing tomorrow. The ECI’s counsel, Senior Advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, criticised Yadav’s move, stating that instead of engaging in theatrics, he should assist the affected persons in rectifying the records. The Bench noted that the deletions might be the result of inadvertent errors, which could be corrected.

Yadav alleged that the SIR has resulted in the mass exclusion of voters in Bihar, contrary to earlier judicial assurances that the Court would intervene if such exclusions occurred. He claimed that the number of voters at risk of deletion could exceed 65 lakh and possibly reach 1 crore if the SIR continued. According to him, the problem lay not in the faulty implementation of the process but in its very design, with similar consequences likely wherever the SIR was undertaken. Citing census projections, Yadav argued that Bihar’s adult population is 8.18 crore, yet the rolls accounted for only 7.9 crore, reflecting a 29 lakh deficit even before the exercise began.

He asserted that electoral roll assessment should be based on the percentage of eligible adults, pointing out that Bihar’s voter eligibility had dropped from 97% to 88% in one stroke, with the risk of further deletions. International data, he said, showed that shifting the burden of voter enumeration from the state to individuals often disenfranchises up to a quarter of voters, predominantly from poor and marginalised groups.

Responding to a query from the Bench, Yadav distinguished the current SIR from the 2003 intensive revision. In 2003, he explained, officers were given printouts and conducted door-to-door verification without demanding documents. By contrast, the present SIR required the submission of enumeration forms and presumed non-citizenship in their absence—measures he described as unprecedented and legally questionable.

Yadav emphasised that the current revision was the first in India’s history to record zero additions. He questioned why the ECI had not found a single eligible voter to include and highlighted gender disparities in deletions, noting that 31 lakh women’s names had been removed compared to 25 lakh men’s. This, he argued, undermined the explanation that migration or deaths were the main reasons for deletions.

He also criticised the booth-level officers’ discretion to ‘not recommend’ voters despite completed forms, pointing to double-digit non-recommendation rates in some districts, and questioned why the ECI withheld related data. Yadav further accused the ECI of altering legal requirements through press releases instead of formal amendments, leading to confusion about documentation rules.

Lastly, he doubted the feasibility of meeting the ECI’s timelines, calculating that each Electoral Registration Officer would need to scrutinise thousands of forms daily while managing other duties. He also warned that the right to appeal deletions was practically ineffective if rolls were frozen close to elections, potentially barring candidates from contesting for five years.