Overview

• Directing the Bihar State Legal Services Authority to mobilise district units, the court asked paralegal volunteers and legal aid lawyers to identify excluded voters, publicise contacts, and help draft and file statutory appeals within the short filing window.
• The court noted petitions focused on roughly 3.66 lakh deletions after the draft rolls and sought a status report within a week, with the next hearing scheduled for October 16.
• The Election Commission challenged affidavits cited by petitioners as inaccurate, saying some claimants were never on the draft rolls due to missing enumeration forms, and the bench admonished counsel over verification.
• ECI data show large-scale changes in Bihar’s rolls, with about 47 lakh excluded from the final list after the Special Intensive Revision and 65.6 lakh removed from the draft, even as the bench said the clean-up was justified given past elector counts exceeding adult population.
• Activists pressed for official disclosure on non-citizen objections—citing 1,087 cases with 390 sustained—and flagged anomalies and gender disparities, while political stakes rose in West Bengal where leaders discussed the coming SIR expected after October 15.