Leader of Opposition in the Bihar Assembly, Tejashwi Yadav, on Saturday shared a Facebook post by a retired IAS officer of the former chief secretary rank in Bihar, Vyas Ji, who raised concerns over the arbitrary deletion of names from the voter list.
In his Facebook post written in Hindi, Vyas Ji recounted his experience of checking the recently uploaded draft electoral roll, stating, “Friends, according to the Election Commission, they have uploaded a draft of the voter list on their website. Out of curiosity, I downloaded the so-called draft to check my and my wife’s name. You can enter your EPIC number — which the Election Commission has still not included in their list of 11 accepted documents (even after a Supreme Court recommendation) — to check your status in the designated field.
When both of us did this, we were asked to contact our BLO, even though the BLO had already filled out our enumeration form and clicked photos of all necessary documents.”
“This is what you call, ‘strange are your ways, bizarre your game — like applying jasmine oil on a rat’s head!’ When all authority ends up in the wrong hands, who is going to stop them from doing as they please? Just imagine — if this is how the ECI is treating educated, retired government employees, what will be the plight of migrant laborers and less-educated people? They will keep searching for their names in vain,” he added.
Earlier in the day, Tejashwi Yadav claimed his own name was missing from the draft electoral rolls published after the Special Intensive Revision carried out by the Election Commission.
“This is my electoral photo identity card number. Here I make this entry and a captcha appears, then it says no matching record found,” Tejashwi said at a news conference. “What does it mean? To contest polls I have to be a voter in Bihar.”
He further accused the Election Commission of reneging on its earlier assurance of providing details for every name removed from the voter list. His allegation came minutes after revealing that his name was not found in the Draft Electoral Roll following the Special Intensive Revision (SIR).
In a post on X, Tejashwi wrote in Hindi that the voter list revision process under SIR 2025 had been “deliberately rigged.” He alleged that although the Commission claimed to have removed 65 lakh names from the rolls, it failed to maintain transparency.
He said the Commission had initially promised to share the reasons behind the removal of every voter — such as death, transfer, duplication or being untraceable — with political parties. However, this commitment was not honoured. Instead, parties were given an incomplete ASD list titled merely as a list of electors whose forms were not submitted and whose names are missing from the Draft Roll 2025, which he said undermines trust in the process.
The Election Commission later in the day dismissed Tejashwi Yadav’s claim as “baseless.”
Officials clarified that Tejashwi’s name does appear in the relevant portion of the draft roll at serial number 416. Hitting back, the poll body reiterated that clean electoral rolls are the bedrock of democracy.
“He should ask the 47,506 booth-level agents of his party to file claims and objections if they find that the name of any eligible voter is left out or if the name of any ineligible voter has been included,” the Commission said.
The EC also pointed out that not a single booth level agent (BLA) from any political party, including the RJD, had submitted a single case for inclusion or deletion to the booth level officers in the past 24 hours.