Yogendra Yadav Challenges Bihar's Voter Roll Revision in Supreme Court Before Assembly Elections

In a significant development, a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) has been filed under Article 32 of the Constitution before the Supreme Court, challenging the Election Commission of India's (ECI) 'Special Intensive Revision' (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar, apprehending that it could result in large-scale disenfranchisement ahead of the state's upcoming Assembly elections.

The PIL, filed by psephologist and politician Yogendra Singh Yadav, also seeks an immediate stay on the SIR, calling it 'manifestly arbitrary, unreasonable, and violative of electoral laws.' As part of the interim relief, the petitioner has urged the Court to stay the ongoing SIR process, prevent any deletions from the existing electoral rolls last updated in January 2025, and direct the ECI to conduct Bihar's elections using those existing rolls.

The petitioner argues that the revision process compels existing voters to re-establish their eligibility using a narrow set of 11 documents deliberately excluding widely held proofs such as Aadhaar cards, ration cards, and MGNREGA job cards. Failure to submit the required forms by the July 25, 2025, deadline would lead to an automatic deletion of names without any opportunity for the affected voters to be heard, which, the petition contends, is a direct violation of the natural justice principle.

The petition highlights that the revision exercise disproportionately impacts marginalized groups such as women, SC/ST communities, and migrants, many of whom lack the specified documents. The 90-day verification window, overlapping with Bihar's monsoon season, is also criticized as impractical given the fact that a large number of these sections of people lack birth certificates, land documents, or other mandated identity proofs, as per media reports (The Hindu, The Indian Express) which led to the confusion among Bihar's 7.89 crore voters.

Further, the PIL argues the SIR violates Section 22 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, and Rule 21-A of the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 as both the statutes require procedural safeguards before deletion of names. It also cites Articles 14, 15, and 326, asserting that the process is discriminatory and undermines democratic rights. The petition further relies on the Supreme Court's KS Puttaswamy (2017) proportionality standard and the 1995 ruling in Lal Babu Hussein, which upheld continuity for existing voters.

(The PIL was filed through an AoR Yash S Vijay, was drawn by Advocates Harshit Anand and Natasha Maheshwari, and settled by Senior Advocate Shadan Farasat.)