Bihar: 15L Applications Seek Inclusion, 2L Exclusion From Voter List
According to the ECI, 99 per cent of those who had filled up enumeration forms have so far submitted their documents
New Delhi: Ahead of the September 1 last date to get names added or deleted in Bihar’s draft roll prepared after special intensive revision (SIR), the Election Commission (EC) said over 15 lakh applications came for inclusion of new names. Besides, about 2 lakh requests have come for exclusion of names and 33,000 forms have been submitted by voters whose names are missing from rolls for addition.
The final voter list will be published on September 30, as Bihar Assembly elections are likely to be held in November.
Among political parties, the CPI(ML)-Liberation has filed 103 applications and the Rashtriya Janata Dal filed 10 for changes in the list. The EC said that the Congress too has applied for deletion of 89-lakh voters from the draft list, but CEO Bihar has asked for evidence with an affidavit before taking action to delete such a large number of votes in Bihar.
The Election Commission plans to issue new voter identity cards to all electors of Bihar after the completion of the ongoing SIR to mark differences from the existing one and prevent forged and fake cards. It is learnt that when electors were given enumeration forms, they were asked to submit the filled-up documents along with their latest photographs. The new photographs will be used to update records and issue fresh voter cards.
According to the EC, 99 per cent of those who had filled out the enumeration forms have so far submitted their documents.
Bihar has become the first state where the number of electors per polling station has been reduced from 1,500 to a maximum of 1,200 as part of the rationalisation exercise to ensure lesser crowding of polling stations on voting day. Due to rationalisation, the number of polling stations in the state has gone up from 77,000 to 90,000.
Meanwhile, Bihar election officials have countered allegations of duplicate voters in state draft rolls. They said the SIR is an ongoing statutory process and the current draft rolls published under the SIR are not final. They are explicitly intended for public scrutiny, inviting claims and objections from electors, political parties, and all other stakeholders.
“Any alleged duplication at the draft stage cannot be construed as a final error or illegal inclusion, as the law provides a remedy through the claims/objections period and subsequent verification by electoral registration officers (EROs),” the chief electoral officer in Bihar said in a statement.
The statement added that in Bihar, especially rural constituencies, it is common for multiple individuals to share identical names, parental names and even similar ages. “The Supreme Court has recognised such demographic similarities as insufficient proof of duplication without field inquiry. Nevertheless, if demographically similar entries (DSEs) are found, they are being identified and removed during the claims and objections period. In such cases, all stakeholders can inform the electoral registration officer, file their objections, and necessary action can be taken," it said.
The poll body said it uses ERONET 2.0 software for detecting DSEs, which flags probable duplicates. These flagged cases are not automatically deleted but are subjected to ground verification by booth level officers (BLOs) and EROs. This layered process ensures genuine electors are not disenfranchised by an automated algorithm.
Further, on the allegation that EC “locked” electoral data to prevent machine-scale, the poll body said this is misplaced. It added the electoral rolls are made available in prescribed formats to ensure integrity and preventing the misuse and making rolls “non-scrapable” is a data protection safeguard, not an attempt to conceal duplication.
