Bihar’s leader of Opposition in the Assembly Tejashwi Prasad Yadav on Saturday accused the Election Commission of reneging on its promise of providing details of every name removed from the voter list, his salvo coming minutes after he said his name was missing from the draft electoral roll after the poll panel’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR).
After Tejashwi said in a news conference that a search by his voter ID number was drawing blank, NDTV reported: “The poll body countered by saying that Mr Yadav's name does appear in the draft roll, listed at Serial Number 416 in Digha Assembly constituency.”
It was not immediately clear who had spoken to the publication.
Minutes later, Tejashwi fired off a post on X (formerly Twitter), accusing the Election Commission of trying to hide whose names had been deleted from the voter lists.
“The voter list revision process (Special Intensive Revision SIR 2025) has been deliberately rigged,” Tejashwi wrote in Hindi.
“The Election Commission is now backtracking on its own promises. Even after removing 65 lakh voters, the new draft list remains ambiguous. It is unfortunate that the Election Commission continuously changes its decisions, retreats from transparency, and ignores the suggestions, complaints, and demands of the opposition, releasing a half-baked list,” he wrote.
“The Election Commission had initially assured that the details of every name removed from the voter list, along with the reason — such as death, transfer (shifted), duplication (repeated), or untraceable — would be shared with all political parties, including the reasons, to build confidence that the process was fair, transparent, and in line with democratic values.
“However, the Commission has now reneged on its own orders and promises. The so-called ASD list being received by political parties in various districts is merely titled:’Part wise list of elector of concerned constituency whose Enumeration Form is not submitted and whose name is not in Draft Roll 2025’," Tejashwi wrote.
“This list indicates whose names are not in the draft voter list, but it does not specify why they were not included. On average, 25,000 to 30,000 votes have been removed per assembly constituency. This list does not allow political parties or ordinary citizens to know whether a person’s name was removed due to death, transfer, duplication, or any other reason.
“Now, in a list of 25-30 thousand names, how will you find out who is deceased and who has transferred? If the Election Commission’s intentions are genuine and honest, this list should be provided booth-wise so that political parties can locate these individuals. The Election Commission, through cunning and conspiracy, has neither provided the booth name, nor the voter’s address, and most importantly, nor the voter’s EPIC Number, so that we could conduct a comparative study and analysis,” he alleged.
“This situation is concerning, serious, and contrary to the democratic process. In all previous press releases, press conferences, and district-level reports issued by the Commission, the numbers of deceased, shifted, repeated, and untraceable voters were provided separately. Opposition parties have repeatedly demanded that booth-wise and category-wise lists of deleted voters be released for each assembly constituency — but now the Commission is only providing a single combined list, which includes neither any categorical information nor the basis for removal,” he alleged.
“This deepens the suspicion that the Election Commission is afraid of the ongoing Supreme Court hearing and is deliberately withholding complete information to avoid questions about the legitimacy of its process. But this is a serious betrayal of democracy,” Tejashwi wrote.
The Election Commission has given time till September 1 for corrections in the draft rolls. But if what Tejashwi has claimed is true, political parties will find it difficult to find people whose names have been deleted unless the people come forward themselves.
In a backward state like Bihar, it remains questionable how many poor people will check for their names and contest deletions.
