Owaisi writes to EC against special voter roll revision in poll-bound Bihar

Hyderabad: AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi has written to the Election Commission raising objections to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral roll in poll-bound Bihar. 

In the letter, Owaisi pointed out that the electoral roll for Bihar has already undergone a Special Summary Revision, which addresses issues such as rapid urbanisation, frequent migration, non-reporting of deaths and inclusion of names of foreign illegal immigrants in electoral rolls, reasons now being cited to justify the SIR.

However, the Special Summary Revision which has been undertaken by the Commission on previous occasions for all the other states as well as 2024 Lok Sabha elections covers all these issues, he said. Recalling the last Intensive 

Revision conducted for Bihar in 2003, Owaisi said it took place well ahead of the 2004 Lok Sabha polls and the 2005 Assembly polls, which gave reasonable time for electors to seek legal remedies for addition or deletion.

"With this instance, we would like to place our first and foremost objection to the Commission's order directing SIR in Bihar - The SIR will have a deleterious effect on electors' across the state due to its proximity to the upcoming assembly elections," he said in the letter dated June 28.

Among other concerns, Owaisi said the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) /Additional Electoral Registration Officer (AERO) has the power to doubt the eligibility of the proposed Electors not only for non-submission of requisite documents but for any reason otherwise as well. 

In fact, the ERO/AERO can even refer cases of suspected foreign nationals to the competent authority under Citizenship Act, 1955. This wide and unsupervised power of ERO/AERO can be misused to not only cause wide scale disenfranchisement but can even lead to loss of livelihood for the affected electors.

The Hyderabad MP requested the EC to explain the rationale behind the SIR and urged it to grant an in-person hearing to AIMIM and opposition representatives so that their concerns could be presented before the Commission's consideration. 

Owaisi earlier accused the EC of implementing NRC in Bihar "through the backdoor". "To be enrolled in the voter roll, every citizen will now have to show documents not only proving when and where they were born, but also when and where their parents were born," he had said in a post on X.

Even the best estimates state that only three-fourths of births are registered and most government documents are riddled with errors, he said. Noting that people in the flood-prone Seemanchal region of Bihar are among the poorest, he called it a "cruel joke" to expect them to possess their parents’ documents.

"The result of this exercise will be that a large number of Bihar’s poor will be removed from the electoral roll," he claimed.