On Tuesday, the Supreme Court of India supported the Election Commission’s view that an Aadhaar card cannot be taken as final proof of citizenship. The comment came during hearings on petitions against the recent revision of Bihar’s electoral rolls, where campaigners said many eligible voters had been wrongly removed.
Justice Surya Kant, leading the bench, said, “The EC is correct in saying Aadhaar cannot be accepted as conclusive proof of citizenship. It has to be verified.” The court added that even if Aadhaar is given along with other documents, such as a ration card, the Commission must still check the information.
The judges also asked if people were clearly told about missing documents when registering to vote, warning that no eligible citizen should be excluded because of unclear procedures. Justice Kant said the Commission’s power to verify voters must be backed by law. “If they don’t have the power, everything ends. But if they have the power, there can’t be a problem,” he remarked.
Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, for the petitioners, said the Commission’s process could wrongly leave out large numbers of voters, including those who were already on the rolls in 2003. He pointed out that no proper survey had been carried out, according to the Commission’s own affidavit.
The court asked for more information on claims that 65 lakh names had been removed, questioning whether these concerns were based on fact or assumption. Advocate Prashant Bhushan also criticised the Commission for not making the list of deleted names public, saying it had only given some information to booth-level agents.
Bhushan added that the EC had not said how many of the 6.5 million removed voters had died or moved away. He said the Commission was avoiding giving the full details, even though it had them.
According to Bhushan, Booth Level Officers had marked some voters as “recommended” or “not recommended,” and whistleblower documents from two districts showed that 10 to 12 per cent of applicants were marked “not recommended.”
“What is the basis for this? This has never happened before,” he said.
Senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, for the Commission, denied the claims, saying the details had been shared with booth-level agents and that due process was being followed.
Political analyst and petitioner Yogendra Yadav also warned that the revision could lead to a very large number of voters being left out. He called the Special Intensive Revision a shift of responsibility from the state to citizens and said it was failing to improve the rolls.
Using government data, Yadav said Bihar has 8.18 crore adults, but the rolls list only 7.89 crore voters, about 29 lakh fewer. “This is the first revision with not a single addition,” he said, adding that poor and marginalised groups were most likely to be excluded.
In court, Yadav brought forward a woman listed as “dead” in the draft roll, but Dwivedi dismissed it as “drama best kept for television.” Yadav also claimed that during home visits, officials were only looking for names to delete, not for new voters to add. He criticised the Commission for changing legal orders through press releases instead of formal notifications.
At the end of the day’s hearing, Justice Bagchi noted that Yadav had given a detailed analysis, regardless of whether the court agreed with it, before the bench adjourned.
