Supreme Court agrees to examine petition challenging electoral roll revision in Maharashtra

NEW DELHI — The Supreme Court has agreed to examine a petition challenging the special intensive revision of electoral rolls in Maharashtra, issuing notices to the Centre, the Election Commission of India, and other respondents.

A bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana issued the notices following a plea filed by chartered accountant and journalist Arun Anandagiri. The petition raises questions regarding the large-scale deletion of names from voter lists during the recent electoral roll revision exercise conducted across the state.

The matter has been posted for hearing on November 5. The petition asks that the revision exercise be kept in abeyance and that no voter whose name appeared on the pre-revision list be excluded or deleted until the top court adjudicates the issue.

According to the office of the state chief electoral officer, Maharashtra had 97,854,049 registered voters before the exercise. Out of that total, 20,688,487 electors—representing 21.14 per cent of the electorate—were excluded from the draft electoral rolls because they could not be traced at their given addresses during the special intensive revision.

Appearing for the petitioner, senior advocate Arvind Datar submitted that voters who had temporarily relocated due to redevelopment projects in cities like Mumbai and Pune were incorrectly deleted under the classification of “person not found.” Datar told the court that roughly 20 million out of the state’s 97.9 million total voters have been removed from the draft rolls, while an additional 12.2 million electors have been struck off under categories designated as “logical discrepancies.”