A bench comprising Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi said it will start hearing the pleas from November 11 onwards

The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to examine on November 11 pleas challenging the Election Commission of India's (ECI) decision to conduct a pan-India special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.

Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for NGO, Association of Democratic Reforms, submitted that the issue goes to the root of democracy, while seeking an early hearing on the pleas against SIR. A bench comprising Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi said it will start hearing the pleas from November 11 onwards.

The bench said though several important matters are listed from November 11 onwards, it would try to adjust the hearing of other matters to take up SIR matters. Bhushan said the urgency of the matter is because the SIR exercise has started in different states. "SIR has started in the rest of the country, and it has assumed some urgency now. They are not accepting the Aadhaar card…they are saying only those other documents…It goes to the very root of our democracy", said Bhushan.

The top court is already hearing pleas challenging the validity of the poll panel's decision to conduct the SIR exercise in Bihar. The poll body on October 16, termed the Bihar SIR "accurate" and told the apex court that the petitioner political parties and NGOs are merely content with making "false allegations" to discredit the exercise.

The ECI contended before the top court that not a single appeal has been filed by any voter against name deletion since the publication of the final electoral roll. The poll body denied the allegation of the petitioners that there was a "disproportionate exclusion of Muslims" from the final electoral roll of the state prepared after the months-long SIR exercise.

The ECI on September 30, while publishing the final electoral list of the poll-bound Bihar, said the total number of electors has come down by nearly 47 lakh to 7.42 crore in the final electoral roll from 7.89 crore before SIR.