On August 1, draft electoral rolls of Bihar were published after the highly contentious Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise, and the total number of registered voters in the state got reduced by more than 6.5 million. The draft rolls claim that 2.2 million electors have died, and 3.6 million have permanently shifted out of Bihar, and thus ineligible to remain voters in the state. The highest exclusion has been reported from Patna, followed by Madhubani and East Champaran districts. On the first working day after publication of the draft rolls, Lok Sabha was stalled amid ruckus by the Opposition demanding a discussion on the revised electoral rolls. The INDIA bloc, a grouping of Opposition parties, has also planned a protest march against SIR, which it said, has “disproportionately affected” marginalised communities and said that the exercise was an attempt to blunt the Opposition’s strength. Before the march to the Election Commission of India office, the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, will host INDIA bloc partners at his Delhi residence. The last time INDIA bloc leaders sat across the table was in June 2024 – a few days before results of the Lok Sabha elections were declared – at Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge’s house. The SIR is clearly the glue to bring back the bloc together after a year of speaking in separate, and sometimes contradictory, voices. The Opposition is now united in its opposition to the SIR of electoral rolls in Bihar.
The Election Commission of India ordered the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls on June 24 this year making it mandatory for more than 78 million voters in Bihar to fill enumeration forms by July 25. During the month-long exercise, electors, who registered after January 1, 2003, when the last intensive revision was done, were required to submit documents to establish their eligibility, including citizenship, by September 1. These electors can submit any of the following documents in support of their eligibility:
i. Identity card or pension pay order of employees/ pensioners of central or state governments, or a public sector undertaking;
ii. An identity card/ certificate or any document issued by government/ local authority/ bank/ post office/ LIC/ PSU before 1.7.1987;
iii. Birth Certificate;
iv. Passport;
v. Matriculation/ educational certificate by a recognised board/ university;
vi. Domicile certificate issued by competent authority in the state;
vii. Forest rights certificate;
viii. OBC/ SC/ ST or any caste certificate;
ix. National register of citizens (where available);
x. Family register prepared by state or local bodies
xi. Deed of any land/ house allotment by government
The exercise, the Election Commission of India, said was aimed at deleting names of electors, who were dead, or had shifted out of Bihar permanently, or had enrolled in multiple places, or were untraceable.
This may have seemed a routine exercise had it not been launched a few months before Bihar goes to polls.
The 2025 Assembly election in the state are expected sometimes in October or November. After the publication of the draft rolls, electors and political parties can file claims and objections on the draft rolls until September 1. As on August 3, the EC had received 941 claims and objections by electors, and none by the Booth Level Agents (BLAs) of national or state parties. The final roll will be published on September 30.
During the SIR exercise, it was alleged that booth level officers (BLOs), who were under pressure to complete the process on time, did not bother to check if the process was being done honestly. Many Indian newspapers have published reports showing wrongdoings in the exercise. Within a day of the publication of the draft rolls, social media users pointed out errors in the them. For example, in one booth in Chapra, a 22-year-old woman elector’s father’s name was mentioned as “father father”; husbands of two women were mentioned as “husband husband”; a 21-year-old woman’s father’s name was shown as “father’s voter ID card”, and a 19-year-old woman’s mother’s name was listed as “Election Commission of India”. Some social media users also found names of people who had died in June and July this year in the draft voter list. Many electors have complained that despite providing documents to the BLOs, the same have not been uploaded by the officials and the electors are now being directed to submit the documents again. These errors give credence to the Opposition charge that the exercise has been done in haste to benefit the ruling coalition in the state elections. The exercise came under political attack soon after its start in June last week. What was supposed to be a routine and mandatory update of the voters’ list became a big political issue. The Opposition has been saying, since the start of the revision, that the SIR is a government attempt to disqualify voters, particularly from the weaker sections and the opposition areas. On August 5, when the two Houses of Parliament met for the first time after publication of the draft rolls, Opposition party MPs stalled proceedings, demanding a discussion on the exercise. But the government, emboldened after the Supreme Court refused to stall publication of the draft rolls, refused to discuss the Bihar SIR, maintaining that the topic comes under the Election Commission of India. Following the protests, the Speaker held a meeting with opposition MPs representing various parties including the Congress, DMK and TMC wherein the Opposition suggested that if the government is not willing to discuss SIR, then discussion can be had on electoral reforms, voter deletion etc, which comes under the law ministry. However, the government was firm on its stand and declined to concede to the demands of the Opposition. The government says that SIR is a Constitutional process being implemented in a precise and non-escalatory manner.
The Opposition says it’s worried that “targeted disenfranchisement may soon spread to other states like Assam and West Bengal”. It also raised the issue of 650,000 voters increased in Tamil Nadu. Leaders of the DMK and its allies, including senior Congress leader P Chidambaram, alleged that the poll body had included migrant workers, especially those from Bihar, in voter lists in the state, a claim that the EC dismissed the “false information”. “This is a problem in Tamil Nadu as they (migrants) came to work here as guest workers. But giving them voter IDs will result in political change in the future. If such attempts are made, we will become roaring lions to oppose it,” DMK general secretary and Tamil Nadu Water Resources Minister Duraimurugan said in Vellore on August 3.
There’s no doubt that electoral rolls require periodic revision to ensure their accuracy and authenticity, especially in states like Bihar where high levels of migration and duplicate entries are frequent. Clean and accurate voter rolls are critical to a healthy democracy. But the poll body should go all out to instil confidence in people’s minds that the revision exercise is carried out with utmost sincerity and honesty and not like a government task that needs to completed before a deadline. If there are gaping errors in the draft rolls, that confidence is lost.
