Prashant Bhushan blames EC for lack of transparency in SIR process

Advocate Prashant Bhushan submitted in the Supreme Court on Thursday (December 4, 2025) that the Election Commission, during the Bihar SIR, issued ‘cyclostyled’ notices to 26 lakh people, asking them to prove their eligibility. 

He alleged that there were still lakhs of duplicate voters left in the final Bihar electoral roll prepared post the SIR exercise.

Appearing before a Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, Mr. Bhushan, representing NGO Association for Democratic Reforms along with advocate Neha Rathi, criticised the EC for its ‘lack of transparency at every stage of the SIR exercise’.

“The EC did not disclose the list of voters deleted from 2025 roll until forced to do so by the Supreme Court in an August 14 order,” Mr. Bhushan submitted.

He argued that although EC’s press notices had indicated the number of claims and objections received, these were not made available online in the required ‘clickable’ format, that is, a format by which the forms could be accessed by clicking on the entry in the list.

He submitted that the EC had brought on record neither the 2003 Intensive Revision Guidelines nor the evidence of having conducted a prior enquiry to substantiate the need for a “hurried” SIR.

“The EC did not conduct any software-based de-duplication exercise during the Bihar SIR leading to an approximate 15 lakh suspected duplicated voters in Bihar’s electoral roll,” he submitted with reference to media reports.

A similar fate was bound to follow in the second phase of the SIR if the EC continued to ignore the de-duplication software to weed out duplicate, fake or multiple entries after field verification, he cautioned.

He said electoral lists and the lists of claims and objections, as well as old electoral rolls, must be made available by EC in a machine-readable format to ensure transparency and access.