'NGOs sitting in Delhi are making noise, no one came from Bihar...', what did the Election Commission?

The Election Commission told the court that the petitioners cannot give arguments and documents directly to the Supreme Court like this; they should file an affidavit, on which the Election Commission will respond.

During the hearing on the Bihar SIR list in the Supreme Court on Tuesday (October 7, 2025), the Election Commission said that till now no person has come to the Election Commission and raised any objection; only the NGOs sitting in Delhi are making noise.

 

Senior advocates Prashant Bhushan and Abhishek Manu Singhvi, representing the petitioners, told the court that the names of 3.66 lakh people were missing from the final list and that they had not been informed of this, so they could appeal. Election Commission lawyer Rakesh Dwivedi countered this argument by stating that the list had been submitted to all political parties.

 

Rakesh Dwivedi said, "We have submitted the list to every political party, but no one is personally approaching the Election Commission. NGOs in Delhi are making noise. They haven't even filed an application challenging the final list yet. They are arguing the same old petition."

 

A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi asked advocate Prashant Bhushan where the victims were. Bhushan demanded that the court make public the names of those removed from the list. He said he could provide the names of 100-200 people who were not on the list. He claimed that a large number of people had been removed from the list.

Responding to Prashant Bhushan's argument, the Election Commission stated that arguments and documents cannot be submitted directly to such a bench. They stated that the petitioners must file affidavits, and the Election Commission will respond. The court directed the petitioners to include only specific issues in the affidavits. The court also noted that both the draft list and the final voter list are available on the Election Commission's website, allowing them to identify excluded names.

Prashant Bhushan told the court that 6.5 million people were removed from the initial draft list, but after the Supreme Court's intervention, 2.1 million were included. He said it was unclear whether the names added to the list were those that were initially removed from the list or were new names. The court asked the Election Commission to provide data on the names removed from the list to the District Electoral Offices. The Election Commission informed the court that most of the voters included in the list were new.