Tejashwi Yadav, leader of the Opposition in the Bihar Assembly, on Saturday said his 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 in a news conference. “What does it mean? To contest polls I have to be a voter in Bihar.”

Tejashwi said he was registered as a voter in the Digha seat, the largest Assembly segment in Bihar with over 4 lakh voters, under the Patna Sahib Lok Sabha constituency.

The Election Commission had published the draft electoral rolls for Bihar on Friday with the number of actual voters brought down to 7.24 crore from the earlier 7.89 crore.

If Tejashwi’s allegations are true, the leader of Opposition is among the 65 lakh voters whose names have been deleted. Tejashwi and others who claim to be eligible voters but have their names deleted and those who turn 18 before October 1 will have to apply afresh.

Under the SIR, the onus is on the voter to prove their eligibility, including citizenship. Petitions filed before the Supreme Court objections have been raised to EC taking the responsibility of citizenship verification.

Tejashwi’s allegation came hours after Rahul Gandhi, leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha in an address to Congress delegates claimed the election system is dead and the Election Commission does not exist.

“What an absolute mockery and what increasingly looks like pre-poll rigging. Even Tejashwi Yadav, the leader of Opposition in the Bihar Assembly, finds his name missing from the electoral rolls after this sham of an SIR exercise. It’s a stark reflection of just how deeply democracy is being undermined in our country,” Mehbooba Mufti, the former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir wrote on her X (Twitter) handle.