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The Supreme Court on Tuesday (August 12, 2025) said “mistakes” might have happened while preparing the draft Bihar electoral roll and pointed to the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) willingness to correct those even as petitioners reminded the court of its promise to “step in” if the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) led to “mass exclusion”.
Appearing before a Bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi on the first day of hearing in the challenge to the SIR, senior advocate Gopal Sankaranaryanan said, “My Lords promised you would step in if there was a mass exclusion. This has happened. Sixty-five lakh people have been excluded from the draft electoral roll published on August 1.”
Senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, appearing for the poll body, said errors were bound to occur “here and there”. “This is a draft roll. It can be corrected by the Booth Level Officers,” he said.
Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, who led the petitioners’ side, said, “In a small constituency, 12 people left out as dead were found alive”.
