Bihar SIR claim submission: SC to hear on Sep 1 pleas seeking extension of deadline

New Delhi, Aug 29 The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear on September 1 the pleas seeking an extension of the deadline for filing claims and objections to the draft electoral rolls published by the Election Commission of India (ECI) after the first phase of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Bihar.

A Bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi agreed to list the batch of pleas challenging the SIR exercise after advocate Prashant Bhushan submitted that the Rashtriya Janata Dal and a few other political parties have filed applications seeking an extension of the September 1 deadline set by the poll body.

In the previous hearing, the Justice Kant-led Bench had orally assured the parties that their request for an extension of the deadline could be considered at a later stage, while posting the matter for hearing on September 8.

It had also directed the ECI to accept online claim forms from voters excluded in the draft electoral rolls, without insisting on the physical submission of documents.

The top court had clarified that the claim form could be submitted with any of the 11 documents originally listed by the poll body, or with an Aadhaar card.

It had asked political parties and their booth-level agents (BLAs) across Bihar to assist people who were unable to submit their enumeration forms and, as a result, had their names omitted from the voters’ list.

In a bid to "boost voter confidence", the Justice Kant-led Bench, in an interim order passed on August 14, had directed the poll body to upload district-wise data of about 65 lakh electors in poll-bound Bihar whose names were omitted in the draft electoral rolls following the initial phase of the SIR, along with reasons for their non-inclusion -- such as death, change of residence or duplicate entries.

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