99.8% Bihar electors covered in roll revision: EC 

Amid raging protests by Congress-led opposition parties against the ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral roll in poll-bound Bihar, the Election Commission on Friday said 7.23 crore of the state’s voters had “expressed full faith" in the process with active participation, as 99.8 per cent electors had been covered to date.

However, at the same time there is a possibility of approximately 65 lakh voters’ names getting struck down from the electoral roll of Bihar. The EC said since June 24, when the SIR began, booth level officers had reported names of around 22 lakh deceased electors, seven lakh voters who had been registered in more than one location, around 35 voters who had either permanently migrated or could not be traced, while enumeration forms of around 1.2 lakh electors were yet to be received. These figures add up to around 65 lakh voters, whose names could be deleted from the state’s electoral roll.

July 26 is the last day for submitting the enumeration form as per the SIR schedule, after which the draft electoral roll will be published on August 1. The exercise began on June 25.

Meanwhile, the Congress-led Opposition on Friday for the fifth consecutive day stalled the proceedings of Lok Sabha demanding the rollback of SIR.

Ahead of the start of the day’s proceedings, several MPs of the Opposition, including those of the Congress, DMK, Samajwadi Party, Trinamool Congress, Rashtriya Janata Dal and Left parties, carried out a protest march with the banner ‘SIR – Loktantra par Var’.

Later in a symbolic protest in front of Parliament’s main entrance, a bin was placed and one by one the Opposition leaders, including Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi and other leaders of INDIA bloc, tore posters with SIR written on them and put them in the bin as a symbolic rejection of the exercise. The MPs also raised slogans like “Save democracy” and “Stop vote-bandi”.

The Opposition has been protesting in both Houses of Parliament against the SIR, alleging that the EC’s exercise was aimed at disenfranchising voters in Bihar ahead of the Assembly elections. Referring to EC’s June 24 order announcing commencement of SIR in Bihar, where it had also mentioned that the exercise will also be undertaken in the entire country and that its schedule will be announced in due course, Kharge on Friday morning said in a post on X that the Narendra Modi government wants to cut down the votes of Dalits, migrants, tribals and backward classes, so that it can change the Constitution as per Manu Smriti.

Kharge further said the RSS and BJP always wanted to keep the poor and backward away from exercising their franchise and now through SIR, it planned to fulfill this wish.

“The entire country has seen now BLOs in Bihar have been filling up enumeration forms of normal voters on their own so that the deprived class is not able to vote in the ensuing assembly elections. Now this is what the ECI will do in the entire country," Kharge said in the post on X.

Meanwhile, the ECI further said forms of 7.23 crore electors have been received and digitised and names of all these electors will be included in the draft electoral roll. The digitisation of forms, along with BLO reports, of the remaining electors will also be completed by August 1, the day on which the draft roll for Bihar will be released.

It further said the lists of those electors who had not filled the forms or are deceased and those who have permanently migrated have already been shared on July 20 with all the 12 political parties, so that any errors can be rectified in the draft electoral roll to be published on August 1.

As per the SIR order, from August 1 to September 1, any elector or political party may fill the prescribed forms and submit claims to the ERO for any eligible elector who is left-out or file objections for removal of any ineligible elector.

The ECI also on Friday, fact checked Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s allegation that the voters’ list has not been provided to political parties. In a post on X, the poll body said that the claim made by her is “incorrect". It also uploaded the video clip of Priyanka Gandhi’s comments in the post.

Top News