Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, July 14: Amidst opposition criticism, the Election Commission of India (ECI) estimates that more than 35 lakh names on the voter list for the upcoming Bihar assembly election will be dropped under the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process of the voters’ list.
According to the ECI Election Commission (EC) data, at least 35.69 lakh voters will be removed from the voter list after the controversial overhaul process, which has faced heavy criticism from the opposition.
This figure includes at least 12.55 lakh (1.59%) registered voters who have died; 17.37 lakh who have permanently moved out of the state (2.2%); and another 5.76 lakh that are duplicate enrolments (0.73%), as per calculation based on available data.
The ECI announced that the revision exercise has crossed 88 percent of the total voting population in Bihar as of Monday. At least 5 percent invalid entries have been filtered out, which is 35.69 lakh voters, it said. It said out of the total 7.90 crore registered voters who need to fill the enumeration forms, a total of 6.60 crore (83.66%) have already submitted them. The remaining close to 5 percent include deceased, shifted, or duplicate voters.
“Therefore, 88.18% of electors have either already submitted their EF (enumeration form) or died or retained their names at one place or permanently shifted out of their previous place of residence. Only 11.82% of electors now remain to submit their filled EFs and many of them have sought time to submit their enumeration forms with documents in the coming days,” the EC said in a statement.
It said out of the three, two rounds of door-to-door visits by the booth level officers (BLO) have been completed to date.
“Nearly one lakh BLOs will soon begin their third round of door-to-door visits. Their efforts are being augmented by the 1.5 Lakh BLAs (booth level agent) appointed by all political parties, each one of whom can certify and submit up to 50 EFs per day,” it added.
To ensure that no eligible urban voter is left out of the list, special camps are being set up in all 5,683 wards of all 261 urban local bodies (ULB) of Bihar. Also, for the electors who have temporarily migrated out of the state, efforts through newspaper advertisements and direct contact are being made to ensure that they are able to fill their EF in time and have their names included in the draft list to be published on August 1.
“Such electors can easily fill up EFs online using their mobile phones through the ECINet App or through the online form on https://voters.eci.gov.in. They can also send their forms to the concerned BLOs through their family members or through any online means, including WhatsApp or similar application,” the EC said, citing the June 24 order.
The newly launched ECINet is accelerating the process of updating forms and documents for field-level election functionaries resulting in the uploading of over 5.74 crore EFs as at 6 pm on Monday.
The document review module of ECINet has also quickened the pace of verification of eligibility of the electors by the assistant electoral registration officer (AERO), electoral registration officer (ERO) and district election officer (DEO) in a streamlined manner.
“In a major push towards use of latest technology and digitisation, the newly launched ECINet platform by ECI, a single integrated platform which is subsuming the earlier 40 different ECI applications, has also been deployed for all aspects of the Bihar SIR exercise and is running efficiently,” the EC said.
Through ECINet, the electors are able to fill their EFs online and also search for their names in the 2003 list, wherever applicable. The electors can also connect with their election officials, including their BLOs using the ECINet App.
Meanwhile, targeting the ECI for claiming that a large number of “foreigners” were found in the Bihar voters list, the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya has said such claims were made to “obfuscate the reality and create a lame excuse for the absurd SIR exercise.” No such complaint was raised during the 2024 elections and EC, in a reply to Parliament in 2019, had claimed that there was no issue of foreign nationals in the country, he said.
The EC had, on Sunday claimed that booth-level officers (BLOs), during their house-to-house visits for the SIR in the State, had found a large number of people from “Nepal, Bangladesh and Myanmar,” listed as voters in Bihar.
“Contrary to the EC’s assurance of BLOs paying three visits to every household and supplying two enumeration forms to every elector, ground reports from Bihar tell us that many households have not had any BLO visit and most electors have no acknowledgement receipt or record regarding the forms submitted,” Mr Bhattacharya said.
The CPI(ML) leader also alleged that the BLOs who were “conveying the true picture to journalists are being suspended.” He said at least one BLO has reportedly collapsed under work pressure, and a BDO has even tendered resignation alleging harassment. “We all know that even in 2019, the EC had told Parliament that there was no foreign national issue and only three electors in India were found doubtful. The EC had no answer to the questions asked by the Supreme Court when the hearing on SIR began on 10 July,” Mr Bhattacharya added.
The claim that “large numbers” of foreign nationals were found, Mr Bhattacharya said, was made only to “obfuscate the reality and create a lame excuse for the absurd SIR exercise. “Unknown source-based stories are being planted to mislead the harassed electorate of Bihar. The SIR exercise is getting murkier with every passing day. Bihar deserves better and will not brook this sinister votebandi (disenfranchisement) drive,” Mr Bhattacharya said.
