Ahead of the Bihar elections, the Election Commission is set to delete 56 lakh names from the voter list, averaging 23,000 per constituency. Opposition alleges the move targets poor and migrant voters, with the Supreme Court now monitoring the situation.
New Delhi: Today, on July 23, in a major move ahead of the upcoming Bihar Assembly elections, the Election Commission of India (ECI) has announced that around 56 lakh people will be removed from the voter list in Bihar after a special intensive revision of the electoral rolls.
This announcement has stirred political tensions, especially among opposition parties, who have raised concerns about the timing and impact of such a large-scale exercise on voters from marginalized sections.
According to the poll panel, the removed names fall into several categories. About 20 lakh people are deceased, and 28 lakh have moved to other states, making them ineligible to vote in Bihar.
Another seven lakh names appear in voter lists in more than one place, and one lakh people listed could not be contacted.
In addition, 15 lakh voters did not submit verification forms, and they are also likely to be excluded from the final list when elections are held later this year.
Earlier, the Election Commission had stated on Tuesday that around 52 lakh entries had already been deleted. Even last week, the poll body had flagged that some registered voters were actually from foreign countries.
This entire voter verification and revision process is a regular and constitutional duty of the Election Commission.
However, in Bihar, the timing of the revision – so close to the Assembly polls – has become a matter of public and legal debate. Critics argue that the revision might disproportionately affect poor and marginalized communities, who often lack the required documents for verification.
This includes even cases where individuals possess the EC’s own voter ID card, which is reportedly not enough on its own to complete re-verification.
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Several petitions have been filed in the Supreme Court, challenging the process. Although the apex court has allowed the exercise to continue for now, it has raised important questions about the timing.
The Court has also directed the Election Commission to complete the process, including providing proper hearing and appeal mechanisms for people whose names are being removed, before the elections begin.
The Election Commission has informed that the final voter list will be published by September 30.
This revision could significantly affect the Bihar Assembly elections, which has 243 constituencies. The removal of 56 lakh names means an average of 23,045 voters per constituency will not be eligible to vote.
The opposition has voiced strong concerns over the voter list purge. They argue that even a 1% removal from the existing voter list – a list that has been used for the last 10 major elections in Bihar – is unacceptable.
One percent of the voter base in Bihar equals about 7.9 lakh voters, or around 3,251 voters per constituency.
This number could play a deciding role in tightly contested seats. In the 2020 Bihar Assembly election, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) lost 52 seats by a margin of fewer than 5,000 votes, and 40 seats by less than 3,500 votes.
The RJD had emerged as the single largest party with 75 seats, but it failed to reach the majority mark of 123 due to the poor performance of its ally, the Congress. The RJD-led alliance could only manage 110 seats in total.
The issue led to heated arguments in the Bihar Assembly on Wednesday, with the opposition RJD-Congress and the ruling BJP-JDU locking horns.
RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar led their respective parties in the debate.
In a significant development, Girdhari Yadav, a Member of Parliament from Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United), also shared his personal view on the matter.
He said that the Election Commission had “forcefully imposed” the voter list revision, which added to the controversy.
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