SIR | Lack Of Formal Appeals Doesn't Mean There Were No Wrongful Deletions : Yogendra Yadav To Supreme Court

Yadav, who is one of the petitioners challenging the Bihar SIR, said the absence of formal appeals under Section 24(A) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 did not mean there were no attempts by wrongly excluded voters to seek inclusion. He described the Commission's claim as a play on language.

He said that many people had approached officials to get their names back on the rolls through available mechanisms rather than filing formal appeals. Yadav said many people used the only mechanism available to them – often re-registration through Form 6 with booth level officers – to return to the final rolls.

“The idea that there was no appeal is absolutely false. We have lakhs of documented cases where they did not find formal appeal, they were wrongly excluded, they tried mechanisms, and the only available mechanism to them they adopted and they got in”, he said.

A bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi was hearing the batch of pleas

During the hearing, Yadav told that after the draft list of Bihar SIR was released, the Election Commission acknowledged deletion of 3.66 lakh voters. He said that the Commission did not recognise the remaining 65 lakh exclusions as “deletions” at all. He argued that the figure of 3.66 lakh could not be relied upon to claim that there were no appeals for the remaining names.

Even within those 3.66 lakh cases, he said, there were numerous instances of unjustified deletions where names were wrongly removed and later restored, yet no formal appeals were recorded because the only mechanism offered at that stage was to seek re-inclusion rather than lodge an appeal.

“There was no formal appeal but people did go to the ECI to get the names included and their names were also included. But their option was 'do you want to get your name included or file an appeal?.' So they just wanted to get their names included. Large number of names were wrongly excluded and then they were included again even in those 3.66 lakh but no formal appeal was made because that avenue was blocked”, he said.

For the remaining 65 lakh excluded names, Yadav said the Commission claimed that only 36,475 inclusion claims were filed. He rejected this figure because the Commission had no mechanism to determine whether a person filing Form 6 was a new voter or someone whose name had been wrongly excluded and who was attempting to return to the rolls.

He said his team analysed the data and found that 2.97 lakh names that were initially excluded reappeared in the final electoral roll of Bihar. He explained that this happened when voters approached booth level officers, were given Form 6, and registered again as new voters.

He cited ECI's data showing that of about 21 lakh new registrations due to attaining the age of eligibility, only around 19.5 per cent were actually newly eligible voters aged 18–19. “I am not saying that all the 80% persons are excluded people trying to come back but that the idea that there was no appeal is absolutely false”, he added.

Yadav also reiterated his broader criticisms of the design of the special revision exercise. Yadav reiterated that electoral rolls must meet three global standards: completeness, equity and accuracy.

On completeness, he said the SIR resulted in a sharp decline in electoral population ratios across states, indicating a structural design defect rather than accidental errors. He said the problem was not with conducting revisions, which were necessary, but with the kind of revision undertaken. According to him, this design would inevitably lead to disenfranchisement wherever it was applied. Yadav said minor duplication could not explain exclusions running into tens of lakhs.

On migration, Yadav noted that Bihar and Uttar Pradesh were out-migration states which may explain why voters reduced there after SIR. However, he pointed out that Tamil Nadu and Gujarat were in-migration states and still lost around 97 lakh and 74 lakh voters respectively following the SIR. He said this could not be explained by migration. When Justice Bagchi suggested duplication in receptor states, Yadav pointed out that all states could not lose voters simultaneously unless the entire country was migrating abroad. He pointed out that every state saw a decline except Assam, where SIR was not conducted.

On equity, Yadav said women were disproportionately excluded wherever SIR was carried out. He said the gender ratio fell in every such state and that the Election Commission owed an explanation. He said 60 lakh women were additionally excluded due to the design defect, within an overall exclusion of around six crore people. He also said there was disproportionate exclusion of Muslims and referred to the Commission's own order recording exclusion of 15,800 voters from a particular community.

On accuracy, Yadav said he was not claiming that the special revision had reduced accuracy, as that could not be determined so soon, but that there was no indication that it had improved accuracy either.

Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal for the petitioners questioned the transparency and reasoning behind the process adopted by the Election Commission, arguing that while the Commission controlled elections under Article 324, the procedure followed must be rule-based and reasoned. He contended that determination of citizenship lay with the central government and not with electoral registration officers, and raised concerns over large-scale deletions close to elections without placing supporting data before the court.

Senior Advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, appearing for petitioner Association for Democratic Reforms, submitted that once a person was included in the electoral roll, certain rights accrued which could not be taken away in the manner adopted. He argued that the special revision shifted the burden of proof onto voters who had already participated in multiple elections, and that the right to vote, being a constitutional right, could not be curtailed without amendments to the Constitution, the Representation of the People Acts of 1950 and 1951, or proper exercise of powers under Article 324.

The matter will continue to be heard tomorrow.

Case no. W.P.(C) No. 640/2025

Case Title: Association for Democratic Reforms and Ors. v. Election Commission of India