Disenfranchising Bihar Voters

S S

Adetailed review and updating of the Bihar State electoral roll was completed by January 2025. The roll was found to be robust. Officials were updating the roll into June. Suddenly, the Election Commission of India called it faulty and junked it, ordering an unprecedented exercise to verify voters from scratch. Chaos has ensued.

Meanwhile, eleven INDIA bloc parties on Wednesday [July 2] told the Election Commission that its decision to undertake a special intensive revision of Bihar’s electoral rolls months ahead of Assembly elections risked disenfranchising more than 2.5 crore voters, as they may not be able to produce the necessary documents. It’s a ploy to introduce NRC by the back door.

A delegation of the Opposition bloc met Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi in New Delhi.

They questioned the exercise’s timing and feasibility and also raised doubts about its methodology given that the process is allotted a “maximum period of only 1-2 months”.

Assembly elections in Bihar are scheduled to be held at the end of the year.

Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi noted that the last such revision took place in Bihar in 2003. He said that representatives of the INDIA bloc told the poll panel that four to five elections have been held in Bihar in 22 years since then, and asked whether they were all faulty.

Singhvi added that the 2003 special intensive revision was held a year before the Lok Sabha elections and two years before the Assembly elections in Bihar.

“Today, you are having it in July, a maximum period of one or two months for an electoral revision exercise of the second largest electorally populated state in India, which has roughly under 8 crore voters,” the Congress MP noted.

Singhvi said members of the delegation told the Election Commission that “disenfranchisement and disempowerment is the worst attack on the basic structure of the Constitution”. He claimed that the exercise would lead to “upwards of 2.5 crore persons, and a minimum of 2 crore people” being disenfranchised.

For the review of the electoral rolls, the poll body had abandoned the documentation process that had been in use for decades, such as Aadhaar cards or ration cards.

“Unless one is already in the electoral roll of 2003, all other names require a birth certificate, and in one category, the birth certificates of both parents are needed,” he said. “How do you expect the backward, flood-affected, poor, and migrant populations to run from pillar to post to obtain birth certificates for themselves or their parents?”

Singhvi noted that if voters fail to obtain the certificates within the time limit, they risk losing their place on the electoral roll. He said that wrongful deletion or addition of voters to the electoral rolls leads to the level playing field in elections being vitiated.

Out of the total 7.89 crore electors in the state, 4.96 crore whose names were already on the rolls on January 1, 2003, will only have to fill out and submit a new enumeration form.

The remaining 2.93 crore – or about 37% of the electors – whose names were not on the voter list after the last revision of electoral rolls was conducted in 2003, will need to submit proof of eligibility.

Voters born before July 1, 1987, must show proof of their date and place of birth, while those born between July 1, 1987, and December 2, 2004, must submit documents establishing the date and place of birth of their parents. Those born after December 2, 2004, will need proof of date of birth for both parents.

Back to Home Page

Frontier
Vol 58, No. 5, Jul 27 - Aug 2, 2025