Political activist Yogendra Yadav pointed to the “discrepancies” in the final voter list for Bihar released by the Election Commission of India on Tuesday.
"As per the ECI, 16.93 lakh Form-6 applications for new voters were received till September 1, and any claims after that were not supposed to be included in the final rolls. Yet, the data shows 21.53 lakh new voters added. How did at least 4.6 lakh names get added after September 1?" asked Yadav on his X handle.
The final Bihar voter list published on Tuesday has 7.42 crore voters, about 6 per cent less than 7.89 crore as on June 24 this year, the day the Election Commission of India (ECI) announced a three-month Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in the state, which created an uproar and legal intervention as the Supreme Court had to step in.
Before the apex court, the EC had argued it was within its powers to seek proof of citizenship and justified placing the burden of proof on electors, but the outcome shows that non-citizens or foreigners were barely a factor — raising questions on why the bar for inclusion was set so high in the first place.
The EC had on June 24 ordered an SIR for the whole country, but started with Bihar as Assembly elections are due in the state in November.
The Congress party strongly criticised the final voter list, calling the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) unfair and lacking transparency. Bihar Congress President Rajesh Kumar said the process had been flawed from the start, yet the Election Commission declared it a success. He pointed out that over 68 lakh voters were removed from the rolls, while only 21.53 lakh names were added. He said the party would make every effort to protect people’s right to vote.
AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi on Wednesday alleged that the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) carried out by the Election Commission in Bihar will provide an opportunity to BJP to "harass" voters.
He was responding to social media posts which claimed that attempts were made to delete Muslim voters in a constituency in Bihar.
"The reality of #BiharSIR. Political parties, especially BJP, will get an opportunity to harass voters & delete them on the basis of religion. In today’s India, poor Muslims and Dalits have only one tool, it is their right to vote. BJP wants to make them defenceless against oppression," he said in a post on 'X'.
Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) spokesperson Shakti Singh Yadav claimed, “despite our best efforts, the names of the poor, Dalits, extremely backward and backward classes were not included in the list. We observed that at least 10,000 names were removed in each assembly constituency.”
RJD national spokesperson Subodh Kumar Mehta told The Indian Express: “The SIR process served little purpose and it was even worse than the annual summary revision (held by the poll panel). Most Booth Level Officers (BLOs) did not even visit the voters and only did paperwork. No real scrutiny was done. What it did was expose the NDA government’s nefarious exclusionary tactics. But they could not succeed, as the combined Opposition made it a big issue with its Voter Adhikar Yatra and its vote chori pitch.”
With the exercise triggering concerns over its potential to disenfranchise large numbers of electors, the Commission’s decision was challenged in the Supreme Court through a bunch of petitions questioning both its authority to conduct a citizenship check of existing voters and the procedure adopted in the SIR.
Although the Supreme Court did not stay the exercise, it raised the bar for exclusion by directing that Aadhaar be included as the “12th document” to establish proof of identity for the revision, which was initially excluded by the central poll panel in the list of valid documents.
On Monday, the Kerala Assembly passed a unanimous resolution against the SIR being held, and described it as an attempt to introduce the National Register of Citizens through the back door.