News Desk – The Supreme Court on Tuesday, July 29, 2025, said it will immediately intervene if there is any sign of mass exclusion of voters when the Election Commission of India (ECI) publishes the draft electoral roll on August 1 as part of a Special Intensive Revision (SIR).
This assurance came from a Bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi after Opposition parties and NGOs, including the Association for Democratic Rights, raised concerns that nearly 65 lakh voters had been wrongfully excluded. The ECI had reportedly marked these individuals as dead or permanently shifted.
Justice Bagchi addressed senior advocates Kapil Sibal and Prashant Bhushan, saying,
“Bring us even 15 people who are marked dead but are alive, and we’ll look into it.”
The court asked the petitioners to wait till the draft is published, calling their current claims “speculative.” Justice Bagchi also explained that the January 7, 2025 voter list would be used as the base for the August draft roll. Any name missing from the new draft, despite being in the January list, would have the chance to seek correction.
The Election Commission’s lawyer, Rakesh Dwivedi, informed the court that people have time till September 1 to submit corrections if they are left out. The final electoral roll will be published on September 30.
However, Mr. Sibal argued that the EC hasn’t shared details of who has been marked dead or shifted, making it impossible for parties or individuals to verify the claims.
“If people don’t know they’ve been excluded, how will they object?” he asked.
Mr. Dwivedi countered by saying all lists had been shared with political parties and were also posted online, but Mr. Sibal said that the information was still unclear and hard to trace.
Justice Bagchi concluded that the August 1 draft roll would reveal all such omissions and that people would have time to act. Justice Kant reminded everyone that the Election Commission is a constitutional body, and it should be assumed that it’s acting according to the law.
