Opposition Party Leaders Approach Supreme Court Against Bihar Electoral Roll Revision

Leaders of eight opposition parties have jointly filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court challenging the Election Commission of India's move to conduct "Special Intensive Revision" of the Electoral Rolls in Bihar, where the assembly elections are due a few months away.

KC Venugopal of the Indian National Congress, Supriya Sule of the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharad Pawar), D Raja of the Communist Party of India, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam party, Harinder Malik of the Samajwadi Party, Arvind Sawant of the Shiv Sena UBT, Sarfraz Ahmed of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha and Dipankar Bhattacharya of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) are the petitioners.

Previously, petitions were filed by RJD MP Manoj Jha; the Association for Democratic Reforms, PUCL, activist Yogendra Yadav and Lok Sabha MP Mahua Moitra challenging the ECI decision.

The Supreme Court today agreed to list the petitions challenging the ECI's decision on July 10, after an urgent mentioning was made before a partial working days bench of Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia and Justice Joymalya Bagchi.

Senior Advocates Kapil Sibal, Dr Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Gopal Sankaranarayanan and Shadan Farasat jointly mentioned the matter for various petitioners.

They submitted that voters who fail to submit the forms with the specified documents will face the harsh consequence of being deleted from the electoral roll, even if they have voted in elections for the last twenty years. "8 crore is the electorate and 4 crore have to do the enumeration," Singhvi submitted. "It is an impossible task," Sibal(for RJD) added. "They won't accept Aadhaar card, voter card," Sankaranarayanan said.