The Supreme Court on Wednesday directed the Election Commission to submit a detailed response explaining the reasons for the deletion of 65 lakh names from Bihar’s draft electoral roll, Bar and Bench reported.

The draft roll was published on August 1 as part of a special intensive revision ahead of the Assembly elections expected to take place in October or November.

The list removed nearly 65.6 lakh voters.

A bench headed by Justice Surya Kant asked the poll panel to file the details about the deletions by Saturday. The matter will be heard on Tuesday.

The direction came on a petition mentioned for urgent hearing by advocates Prashant Bhushan and Neha Rathi on behalf of the non-profit organisation Association for Democratic Reforms.

After the publication of the draft roll, the Election Commission had stated that of the 65 lakh names deleted from the list, 22 lakh were due to deaths, 36 lakh were persons who had either permanently shifted or were untraceable and 7 lakh were duplicate entries.

Enumeration forms for around 1.2 lakh voters were still pending, it had added.

The petition stated that while the Election Commission had shared a list of the 65 lakh deleted names with the booth-level agents of a “few” political parties, the list did not specify the reason in each case, The Hindu reported.

Bhushan argued that without the reasons for each deletion, the list did not serve any purpose as it made it impossible to cross-check the details on the ground.

“The list with names of 65 lakh deleted electors curiously fails to disclose the reason for the non-submission of their enumeration forms, an information that the Election Commission evidently possesses,” the newspaper quoted the advocate as saying.

The petition urged the court to direct the Election Commission to publish a complete and final list, broken down by Assembly constituency and booth of the 65 lakh voters whose enumeration forms were not submitted, along with reasons for each non-submission against each name.

It also asked for the publication of an Assembly constituency and booth-wise list of electors whose enumeration forms have been marked “not recommended” by the booth-level officers.

The revision of the electoral rolls in Bihar was announced by the Election Commission on June 24.

As part of the exercise, persons whose names were not on the 2003 voter list needed to submit proof of eligibility to vote.

Voters born before July 1, 1987, were required to show proof of their date and place of birth, while those born between July 1, 1987, and December 2, 2004, had to also submit documents establishing the date and place of birth of one of their parents.

Those born after December 2, 2004, needed proof of date of birth for themselves and both parents.

The draft voter list comprises electors who submitted their enumeration forms to the poll panel between June 24 and July 26. They will now have to produce proof of citizenship to make it to the final list that will be published on September 30.

A Scroll analysis of the data published by the Election Commission on August 1 showed that women made up 55% of voters who were excluded from Bihar’s draft voter list after the revision.

It also showed that five of the state’s 10 districts with the largest share of Muslim population had the highest number of excluded voters.

At 15.1%, Gopalganj district in western Bihar saw the highest rate of exclusion in the state. The voter list in the district’s Gopalganj Assembly constituency shrunk by 18.25% – also the highest in the state.

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