Your exercise is not the problem... it is the timing, Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia told the Election Commission

New Delhi: The timing of the Election Commissions special intensive revision of Bihars electoral rolls - months before the Assembly election - was questioned by the Supreme Court Thursday, in a high-stakes hearing that included arguments on disenfranchisement and determinants of citizenship.

Your exercise is not the problem... it is the timing, Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia told the Election Commission, noting individuals dropped from the list would have no time to appeal the exclusion.

There is nothing wrong in the exercise... except that a person will be disenfranchised ahead of the election and s/he wont have the time to defend the exclusion before voting, Justice Dhulia continued.

Courts will not touch the electoral roll once they are finalised... which means a disenfranchised person will lack the option to challenge it (the revised list) before the election, he said, when urged by senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, appearing for the EC, to allow the revision to be completed before ruling.

There is nothing wrong in having this intensive process so non-citizen do not remain on rolls... but it should be de hors (i.e., conducted separately from) this election, Justice Joymala Bagchi added.

Top Courts 3 Questions To EC This is a very important issue and goes to the very root of democracy... they (the petitioners) are not only challenging the powers of the Election Commission but also the procedure... the Supreme Court then said as it sought a reply from the poll panel on questions raised by the clutch of petitioners.

The court eventually posed three important questions to the Election Commission.

Explain the panels authority to conduct a special intensive revision,

Explain the validity of the review procedure, and Explain the timing of the exercise, i.e., just before an election. The Supreme Court - which refused an interim stay on the voter list revision before todays hearing - asked tough questions of the poll panel. This included asking the EC to explain which section of the law - the Representation of Peoples Act - allowed it to conduct this exercise. There is either summary revision or intensive revision. Where is special intensive revision? the poll panel was asked.

The EC was also asked why it had linked this exercise to the 2025 Bihar election.

Why Aadhaar Not Accepted? Senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayan, appearing for one of the petitioners, argued the revision is arbitrary and discriminative since it forces voters on the list for over a decade to re-verify themselves, and to do so without using government-issued IDs like the Aadhaar. He pointed out 10 major elections (i.e., five federal and five state) had been held since the last voter list revision.

On this point too the court had questions for the poll panel, asking why an ID, insisted on by the government as proof of identity for the issue of other documents, had been excluded.

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