'Large documents voter friendly': Supreme Court on exclusion of Aadhaar from Bihar SIR; observes 11 docs better than 7

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Wednesday said the 11 documents required for the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in the poll-bound Bihar show the electoral roll revision is "voter-friendly" compared to the seven documents needed for a summary revision."The number of documents in summary revision conducted earlier in the state was seven and in SIR it is 11, which shows it is voter friendly. We understand your arguments that non-acceptance of Aadhaar is exclusionary but a high number of documents is actually inclusionary," the bench said according to news agency PTI.A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi, which resumed hearing on a batch of pleas challenging the June 24 decision of the Election Commission of India (ECI) to conduct SIR in poll bound Bihar, said despite petitioners' arguments that non-acceptance of Aadhaar was exclusionary, it appeared the large number of documents was "actually inclusionary".The top court noted electors were required to submit any one of the 11 documents on the list.Senior advocate Abhishek Singhvi, appearing for the petitioners, disagreed and submitted the number of documents may be high but they had the least coverage.Giving an example of passport availability with the electors, Singhvi said it was only one to two per cent in Bihar and they have no provision for permanent resident certificates given in the state.

"If we see the availability of documents with the population in Bihar it can be seen the coverage is very low," he said.The bench said the coverage of 36 lakh of passport holders in the state appears to be good."The list of documents is prepared normally after taking feedback from various government departments to ensure maximum coverage," Justice Bagchi pointed out.