Overview

• The bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi directed the Bihar State Legal Services Authority to mobilise paralegals and free legal counsel so excluded voters can file appeals promptly, with a status report due in a week and the next hearing on October 16.
• The court recorded about 3.66 lakh deletions from Bihar’s final roll and said the SIR was justified given earlier inflated elector counts, stressing that appellate decisions must be reasoned rather than cryptic.
• The Election Commission told the court that at least one affidavit filed by ADR and argued by Prashant Bhushan was false because the individual cited was never on the draft roll, drawing judicial disapproval of the filing.
• Activist Yogendra Yadav alleged data anomalies, including duplicate and gibberish entries, and sought disclosure of how many non‑citizens were removed, citing figures of 1,087 objections on citizenship grounds with 390 sustained.
• In West Bengal, where an EC team is reviewing preparations for a possible SIR after October 15, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee accused the EC of threatening officials and called the exercise a ‘backdoor NRC,’ while BJP leaders claimed 1–1.2 crore ‘illegal’ or ‘bogus’ voters could be deleted.