Appearing for one of the petitioners, the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), advocate Prashant Bhushan argued, “Elections are imminent now, and this Court can’t do much to change the list, but at least the list and deletions should be published.”

The Supreme Court on Thursday posted for November 4 the hearing of a batch of petitions challenging the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) decision to conduct a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in poll-bound Bihar.

A Bench of Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi heard submissions from the petitioners, who alleged irregularities in the revision process and sought a direction to the ECI to separately publish the list of voters added and deleted during the recently concluded SIR exercise.

Appearing for one of the petitioners, the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), advocate Prashant Bhushan argued, “Elections are imminent now, and this Court can’t do much to change the list, but at least the list and deletions should be published.”

Responding to this, the Bench said it was confident that the poll panel would fulfil its statutory obligation to make voter data public once the revision process concluded.

“They (the ECI) know their responsibility. After doing addition and deletion, they are bound to publish it, and the matter is not closed,” the Court observed.

Senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, appearing for the Election Commission, informed the Court that for the first phase of polling, the last date for filing nominations is October 17, and the electoral roll will be frozen as of that date. For the second phase, the last date for nominations is October 20, and the revision process will continue until then.

He added that no appeals had been received so far against deletions, even though the Supreme Court had earlier ensured that free legal aid was made available to voters wishing to challenge deletion from the electoral rolls, as directed in its order last week.

The Bench took note of the ECI’s assurance and scheduled the matter for detailed consideration on November 4, after the two-phase elections are completed.

The Bihar Assembly elections are slated to be held in two phases, on November 6 and November 11, with counting expected to follow shortly thereafter.