Amid Opposition concerns over the ‘special intensive revision’ of the electoral roll in poll-bound Bihar, ten INDIA bloc parties told the Election Commission Wednesday that people will struggle to produce documents being sought for the exercise at such short notice, and “it will disenfranchise 2-3 crore voters in the state”.
The INDIA bloc delegation met Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi in New Delhi.
Briefing the media after the meeting, Congress leader and Rajya Sabha member Abhishek Manu Singhvi asked whether the elections held since the last revision of voter lists in 2003 were “faulty”.
“Firstly, we said the last revision was in 2003. For 22 years, four or five Bihar elections have happened. Were all those elections faulty or imperfect or unreliable?” he said, pointing out that the 2003 SIR was held a year before the Lok Sabha elections and two years before the Assembly elections in Bihar.
“Today, you are having it in July, a maximum period of one or two months for an electoral revision exercise of the second largest populated state in India which has roughly under 8 crore voters. You want to have it in one or two months,” he said.
Singhvi said “disenfranchisement or disempowerment is the worst attack on the basic structure of the Constitution”.
“We gave universal adult suffrage in 1950… Today, every vote counts. Even if you wrongfully delete or wrongfully add a single voter, it is creating a non-level playing field which affects elections and democracy, which are part of the basic structure,” he said.
Questioning the need for birth certificates in the SIR, he said: “You have abandoned what you have been using for several decades: a combination of Aadhaar card and ration card. This time, you say that to establish residence or identity on electoral rolls… Unless you are on the electoral roll of 2003, all others have to produce a birth certificate. In one category, you have to produce the birth certificate of your father and mother. Now, how do you expect a very diverse profile of Bihar voters – backward, flood-affected, poor, SC, ST, unempowered, migrants – to run from pillar to post to get the birth certificate of their own father or mother.”
He said the delegation told the EC that “upwards of 2.5 crore persons – the minimum figure of 2 crore people – may be disenfranchised by this exercise”.
“Is this to be done in two months? Suddenly, before elections. We are not against it. It can be done with great caution, care, comprehensiveness and time after these elections. Then, you have five years for Bihar,” Singhvi said.
He also said that though the EC heard the parties, it seemed “disinclined” to accept the submissions. “One of the main points they made was how can we listen to you or change our view because each of your political parties has increased the BLO (booth level officer) figures by hundreds after the announcement seven days ago. I pointed out that there is no contradiction in this. You make a new rule, we have no option but to increase our BLOs. But that doesn’t mean we can’t ask these questions,” he said.
“Another argument made (by EC) was that because you made so many complaints about the validity of the electoral roll in Maharashtra, it was important to do the exercise in Bihar,” he said. “Well, if you had to do the exercise because we complained, it doesn’t mean we can’t complain about Maharashtra. It means you should wait and do an exercise which will give purity to Bihar after the elections, not in the last two months,” he said.
RJD MP Manoj Jha, who also spoke to reporters, said the meeting “cannot be called cordial at all”.
“I have no reason for it. We expressed concern over Bihar, about the poor, backward, minorities, Dalits, Muslims,” he said. He alleged that on the EC’s target are 20 per cent people who migrate from Bihar.
“They (EC) didn’t have a rationale behind why they were doing something which wasn’t done for 22 years,” he said.
“Most people don’t have the means to mark their eligibility… We are talking about those who don’t have a suitcase to keep documents… We told the EC that if your intention is to exclude thousands, then this story won’t end here, and there will be floods on the streets,” Jha said, adding he hopes the EC “will read the writing on the wall”.
CPI (ML) Liberation’s Dipankar Bhattacharya said the worries and apprehensions of the parties increased after the meeting.
“The EC gave this statistic that 20 per cent people from Bihar migrate from the state. The EC said that to vote, you have to be ordinarily resident. It means those who migrate and go and vote are not voters, as per the EC,” he said.
Bhattacharya said that through the SIR, people will have to go through a “citizenship test”.
“People have called the SIR ‘votebandi’ and are reminded of ‘notebandi’ (demonetisation),” he said.
Singhvi also raised concern over the “EC only allowing two persons per party” at the meeting, and claimed that the delegation was told that “only party presidents could go in”.
“This kind of ban means the necessary conversation in a democracy between political parties and the EC won’t happen,” he said.
On the issue of some leaders not being allowed to attend the meeting, an EC official said: “Some of the participants were given an appointment and others were allowed to join in without any prior appointment, as the Commission decided to meet two representatives from every party so as to listen to all views.”
“The Commission stated that the SIR is being conducted in accordance with the provisions of the Article 326, RP Act, 1950 and instructions issued on 24.06.2025,” the official said.
According to the official, party representatives raised various concerns related to the SIR. “Each concern which was raised by any member of a political party was fully addressed by the Commission. The Commission thanked all political parties for appointing more than 1.5 lakh booth level agents (BLAs) at the ground level for participating in the SIR exercise,” the official said.
Those present at the meeting included Singhvi, Congress Bihar unit chief Rajesh Ram, RJD’s Jha, SP’s Harender Malik, NCP-SCP’s Fauzia Khan, CPI(M)’s John Brittas, CPI (ML) Liberation’s Bhattacharya, CPI’s D Raja, Shiv Sena (UBT)’s Anil Desai, DMK’s NR Elango, and JMM’s Vijay Kumar Hansdak.
No representative from the TMC was there at the meeting. A delegation of the party, which had met EC officials earlier, said it suggested that 2024 should be used as the base year for the SIR of the electoral roll.
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