Mahua Moitra Moves SC To Stop EC’s ‘Unconstitutional’ Bihar Voter Roll Purge
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Mahua Moitra has moved the Supreme Courtroom towards the ECI’s voter listing revision in Bihar, calling it unconstitutional. She warns it might unfairly exclude lakhs of real voters, particularly the poor and migrants.
New Delhi: Trinamool Congress (TMC) Member of Parliament, Mahua Moitra, has filed a writ petition within the Supreme Courtroom of India difficult the latest transfer by the Election Fee of India (ECI) to conduct a Particular Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls in Bihar.
The petition has been filed underneath Article 32 of the Structure, marking it as a Public Curiosity Litigation (PIL). Moitra claims that the order issued on 24 June 2025 violates constitutional rights and will result in large voter exclusion simply months earlier than the upcoming Bihar elections.
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In her petition, Moitra urged the Supreme Courtroom to right away cease the implementation of the SIR order in Bihar. She has additionally requested the Courtroom to cease the Election Fee from conducting any such train in different states sooner or later.
She argues that the order shouldn’t be solely arbitrary but additionally unconstitutional. In line with her, it unfairly impacts poor folks, ladies, and migrant staff—sections of society who could face difficulties in producing particular paperwork to show their eligibility to vote.
That is the primary time that the ECI is conducting such an train the place even these voters whose names are already on the electoral rolls and who’ve voted a number of occasions previously are being requested to re-verify their eligibility.
Moitra and her authorized workforce declare this course of is
“unprecedented” and will “result in large-scale disenfranchisement of eligible voters within the nation thereby undermining democracy and free and honest elections within the nation.”
The ECI’s June 24 order mandates that voters should present citizenship paperwork for his or her names to be included or retained within the voter listing.
These paperwork embody proof of citizenship of both or each dad and mom. If a voter fails to offer these, they might be excluded from the electoral roll.
Moitra’s petition argues that this requirement is “extremely vires Article 326” of the Indian Structure. It claims that this introduces new and unrelated situations not laid down by both the Structure or the Illustration of the Folks (RP) Act, 1950.
“The impugned SIR order requires the inclusion or retention of a voter’s title within the electoral roll upon manufacturing of citizenship paperwork, together with proof of citizenship of both or each the dad and mom, failing which the voter is susceptible to exclusion. This requirement is extremely vires Article 326 and introduces extraneous {qualifications} not contemplated by the Structure or the RP Act 1950.”
The petition additionally highlights that underneath the present legal guidelines—significantly Rule 21A of the Registration of Electors Guidelines (RER), 1960 and Kind 7 learn with Rule 13—solely an
“Software for objecting inclusion or in search of deletion of title in electoral roll”
can be utilized for adjustments to the listing. Due to this fact, requiring folks to furnish recent paperwork to show citizenship goes past what the regulation permits.
Beforehand, the Affiliation of Democratic Reforms (ADR), a well known election monitoring NGO, had additionally approached the Supreme Courtroom towards the identical ECI order.
ADR, via its lawyer Advocate Prashant Bhushan, acknowledged that the EC’s order “can arbitrarily and with out due course of” take away lakhs of official voters from the rolls. Bhushan identified that the order not solely lacks correct process but additionally has an “unreasonably quick timeline” for implementation.
He warned:
“That the documentation necessities of the directive, lack of due course of in addition to the unreasonably quick timeline for the mentioned Particular Intensive Revision of Electoral Roll in Bihar additional make this train certain to end in elimination of names of lakhs of real voters from electoral rolls resulting in their disenfranchisement.”
In the meantime, the Election Fee defended its choice, saying that Bihar wanted the Particular Intensive Revision as a result of a number of causes—speedy urbanisation, elevated migration, a lot of new younger voters, deaths not being reported on time, and unlawful international immigrants being included within the rolls.
The EC mentioned the principle purpose of the SIR is to make sure solely eligible residents are on the rolls and to guard the
“integrity and accuracy of the electoral roll.”
The Fee has instructed booth-level officers to go house-to-house for voter verification. It additionally acknowledged that the method is being carried out strictly in response to authorized and constitutional pointers.
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