Patna/New Delhi: In response to growing opposition unease over Bihar’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise, the Election Commission of India (ECI) has firmly rejected claims that it failed to share details of voters removed from the electoral rolls.
The ECI emphasised that lists of deleted names, including those flagged for reasons such as death, internal migration or duplicate registration, were shared with political parties — including at the Booth Level Officer (BLO) level — well before the draft roll was made public on August 1.
On Wednesday, a bench of the Supreme Court directed the ECI to provide a detailed response by August 9, following a petition by the NGO Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) seeking full transparency over the alleged deletion of around 65 lakh voter names from the draft electoral roll. ADR had alleged that the ECI removed the column titled “Uncollectable Reason” before publishing the draft, impairing scrutiny of individual deletions.
Meanwhile, the Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) has accused the ECI of misleading the public by claiming there were no objections, despite withholding booth-level deletion data — a move it described as obstructing political analysis and voter restitution efforts.
The Congress and RJD, major opposition parties in Bihar, have launched a public campaign alleging that the SIR process risks disenfranchisement of marginalised voters and strategic manipulation favoring the ruling coalition. Leaders argued that not accepting common documents like Aadhaar or older voter IDs could disproportionately affect migrant, poor, and rural communities.
As of Wednesday, the ECI reported that no recognised political party had filed formal objections to the draft rolls—claiming the departments had been given ample opportunity to flag inconsistencies or lodging complaints during revision.
The matter is now set for another Supreme Court hearing on August 12, where ADR and other petitioners will press for public release of booth-level voter deletion data and explanations for each record omitted.
