Supreme Court asks for EC’s reply on deletion of 65 lakh names from Bihar’s draft voter roll

The Supreme Court on Wednesday directed the Election Commission to submit a detailed response explaining the reasons for the deletion of 65 lakh names from Bihar’s draft electoral roll, Bar and Bench reported.

The draft roll was published on August 1 as part of a special intensive revision ahead of the Assembly elections expected to take place in October or November.

The list removed nearly 65.6 lakh voters.

A bench headed by Justice Surya Kant asked the poll panel to file the details about the deletions by Saturday. The matter will be heard on Tuesday.

The direction came on a petition mentioned for urgent hearing by advocates Prashant Bhushan and Neha Rathi on behalf of the non-profit organisation Association for Democratic Reforms.

After the publication of the draft roll, the Election Commission had stated that of the 65 lakh names deleted from the list, 22 lakh were due to deaths, 36 lakh were persons who had either permanently shifted or were untraceable and 7 lakh were duplicate entries.

Enumeration forms for around 1.2 lakh voters were still pending, it had added.

The petition stated that while the Election Commission had shared a list of the 65 lakh deleted names with the booth-level agents of a “few” political parties, the list did not specify the reason in each case, The Hindu reported.

Bhushan argued that without the reasons...

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