Bihar Assembly Elections 2025: Massive purge in electoral rolls? EC publishes final voter list

The Chief Electoral Officer in Bihar made the announcement on social media, tagging the Election Commission of India.

New Delhi: Bihar has 7.42 crore voters as of now, according to the final electoral list prepared by the Election Commission after the contentious Special Intensive Revision (SIR) that attracted criticism from the Opposition.

According to an EC, 3.66 lakh people who managed to get into the draft list could not find their names in the final list, which was published on Tuesday afternoon, while another 21.53 lakh were added to the final list. The reason for deletion of names could be their inability to provide documents to prove their citizenship or their domicile.

The total number of voters will rise before Assembly elections as new voters can register up to ten days before the last date of filing of nominations.

Bihar had 7.89 crore people in the electoral rolls as on June 24 and the SIR exercise had started the next day. A draft roll was published on August 1 after people were given time till July 25 to submit enumeration forms along with required documents. The draft roll had 7.24 crore voters, leaving 65 lakh out of the list.

People whose names appeared in the 2003 voters list, which was prepared after the previous SIR, and their children were to provide only the copy of the voter list. Others had to provide documents to prove citizenship and domicile from a list of 11 documents.

An EC statement said physical and digital copies of the final electoral roll are being shared with political parties. Any voter can check it online at https://voters.eci.gov.in.

"This large-scale exercise was made successful through the sincere efforts of Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Bihar, District Election Officers (DEOs) of all 38 districts, 243 Electoral Registration Officers (EROs), 2,976 Assistant Electoral Registration Officers (AEROs), around one lakh Booth Level Officers (BLOs), lakhs of volunteers and the full involvement of all the 12 major political parties, including their district presidents and over 1.6 lakh Booth Level Agents (BLAs) appointed by them," it said.

"If any eligible person still wishes to apply for inclusion of their name in electoral roll, they can submit an application up to ten days before last date for filing nominations for election," the statement said, adding "if any person is not satisfied with decision of ERO regarding an entry in final electoral roll, they may, under Section 24 of the RP Act, 1950, file a first appeal before District Magistrate and a second appeal before CEO," it added.

The EC had on June 24 said that it has decided to begin SIR in the entire country and would be starting it with Bihar, as the state is going to polls in October-November. It had then said that the schedule for the rest of the country would be announced later.

It had reasoned that the SIR was necessary because the exercise was last held in 2003 and due to rapid urbanisation and frequent migration, there could be instances of repeated entry in electoral rolls.

The culmination of the process comes amid protests by the Opposition, claiming it was an exercise in mass disenfranchisement. The I.N.D.I.A bloc had hit the streets with 'Vote Chori Yatra' in Bihar with top leaders Rahul Gandhi and Tejashwi Yadav leading the protest.