NEW DELHI, July 8 -- The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear on July 10 a batch of petitions challenging the Election Commission of India's (ECI) decision to undertake special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in poll-bound Bihar and allowed the petitioners seeking a stay of the ongoing exercise to serve a copy of their pleas to the poll body. A bench of justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and Joymalya Bagchi, sitting during the partial working day, passed the order on an urgent mentioning by senior advocates Kapil Sibal, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Gopal Sankarnarayanan and Shadan Farasat, representing multiple petitioners. "Put up on Thursday. An advance copy of the petition be given to the respondent [ECI]," the bench said. Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Trinamool Congress (TMC) lawmakers Manoj Jha and Mahua Moitra, non- government organisations Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and Peoples Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), as well as political activist Yogendra Yadav have filed the petitions challenging ECI's June 24 order to undertake SIR in Bihar. Later in the day, a fresh petition was filed by Opposition leaders, including KC Venugopal (INC), Supriya Sule (NCP-SP), D Raja (CPI), Harinder Malik (Samajwadi Party), Arvind Sawant (Shiv Sena- UBT), Sarfraz Ahmed (JMM), Dipankar Bhattacharya (CPI-ML), Murleedharan (CPI-M) and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) - the ruling party in Tamil Nadu. Other petitions have also been filed, including one by a former Bihar MLA. Sibal told the court that this is a matter of the moment that should be taken up on board and notice be issued to ECI. Singhvi supported his suggestion and said that instead of calling upon the respondent on Thursday, notice should be issued so that stay of the SIR can be taken up on that day without wasting further time. "Such a squeezed timeline has been specified with just a month given to submit the enumeration forms that will expire later this month," Singhvi added. The court said that the timelines cited do not have the sanctity as in the MS Gill decision. "The elections have not been notified. You can serve a copy even to the office of attorney general. We will see," the bench said. In cases such as MS Gill Vs Chief Election Commissioner (1978) and Lakshmi Charan Sen Vs AKM Hassan Uzzaman (1985), the top court underscored that elections, once in progress, should be allowed to proceed uninterrupted to protect the democratic process. The approach aligns with a broader principle that the judiciary's role is to interpret the law and test its validity, not to create laws or interfere directly in legislative matters. Judicial restraint in electoral affairs has been a consistent theme in Indian jurisprudence. The Supreme Court has often invoked it in cases where parties have sought to halt elections. In his plea, RJD leader Jha called the revision a tool of "institutionalised disenfranchisement" that will disproportionately target Muslim, Dalit, and poor migrant communities in a state where elections are to be held before November this year, when the term of the assembly expires. In the fresh petition filed jointly by 9 Opposition parties led by KC Venugopal, the political leaders have questioned the need for SIR when the electoral roll, prepared after the Special Summary Revision (SSR) - carried out from October 2024 to January 2025, is adequate for conducting the upcoming elections in the state. The SIR lacks application of mind by ECI, the petition said, adding, "There is no pressing reason pursuant to which a last minute, total updating of existing electoral rolls at the heels of the upcoming assembly election was required to be undertaken." They even termed the exercise "impractical" citing the 98 days over which the entire SIR is to be conducted which is neither required nor desirable. Last time such an intensive revision was undertaken in Bihar was in 2003, a year before the Lok Sabha elections in 2004 and two years prior to the assembly elections in the state. Moreover, no prior efforts have been made to apprise the electorate of the documentation required for SIR, it added. All the petitions echoed concerns about the manner and timing of ECI in undertaking the exercise, giving 30 days for voters to provide proof of their citizenship based on a set of 11 documents, which do not include readily available ones such as Aadhaar, ECI photo identity card, or ration card. Jha's petition called the revision process "hasty and ill-timed", alleging that it had the effect of "disenfranchising crores of voters, thereby robbing them of their constitutional right to vote." "It (ECI order) is being used to justify aggressive and opaque revisions of electoral rolls that disproportionately target Muslim, Dalit and poor migrant communities, as such, they are not random patterns but it is engineered exclusions," the Rajya Sabha member alleged in his plea. Jha noted that the exercise has been launched during the monsoon, when many districts are affected by floods and the displacement of the local population. His petition questioned the meaningful participation of a large section of the population. On June 24, ECI announced the revision, emphasising the need to clean the electoral roll due to rapid urbanisation, frequent migration, increasing numbers of first-time voters, non-reporting of deaths, and the inclusion of names of undocumented foreigners. ECI said an electoral roll revision was last held in Bihar in 2003, which covered nearly 50 million people, underlining it has a constitutional obligation to ensure that only citizens are on it. It instructed the electoral registration officers to treat the 2003 electoral roll as "probative evidence of eligibility, including presumption of citizenship unless they receive any other input otherwise." The voters are required to submit enumeration forms within 30 days, followed by the filing of claims and objections and their disposal within 30 days. Jha said it is a settled law that the burden of proving the citizenship lies with the state. He added that an overwhelming majority (about 47.4 million out of 79 million on the current electoral roll) carry a disproportionately high burden of proving their citizenship with the help of proofs of date and place of birth. As per ECI data, Bihar has 78,969,844 registered voters as of June 24, 2025. The state is the native place of the highest number of migrant workers, with over 9.3 million people migrating between 2001 and 2011. The petitions argued that the migrant workers will be the most affected, as many of them, despite remaining listed in the 2003 voter roll, are unlikely to be able to return to Bihar within the stipulated time frame of 30 days to submit their enumeration forms, leading to automatic deletion of their names. The pleas termed the ECI's decision unconstitutional and said it is violative of the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960. The revision order and the subsequent press release empower the electoral registration officers or such other officers to initiate a suo motu inquiry. The officers can issue notices to the proposed electors and decide upon their inclusion in the final electoral roll, even as Rule 13(2) permits filing of claims and objections only at the instance of the affected person. "The short deadlines make the whole process unreasonable and unworkable and has the effect of bypassing the procedure of conduct of inquiry into claims and objections as contemplated under the Rules," one of the pleas stated. Moitra's petition sought a direction from the top court to restrain ECI from issuing similar orders for SIR of electoral rolls in other states of the country. She claimed the exercise resembles the structure and consequences of the National Register of Citizens, as the consequence of non-submission of documents will result in automatic exclusion from the electoral roll, without adequate procedural protection. The petitions unanimously opposed the ECI's decision to undertake SIR, citing a special summary revision (SRR) conducted between October 2024 and January 2025 in Bihar....