In Bihar, finding your name on the voter list is a bureaucratic treasure hunt

Imagine this: you attend a massive event and park your vehicle in a lot with lakhs of others. After a pleasant time at the event, you are told: “Some vehicles have been removed; the rest have been rearranged. If you want to know if yours is still here, search through all the lakhs of vehicles yourself.” No one tells you which ones were removed—you are left to comb through the chaos.

This is exactly the situation crores of Bihar’s voters face, thanks to the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) handling of the latest voter roll “clean-up”.

Big numbers, bigger confusion

The ECI recently announced a major “clean-up” in Bihar’s voter lists. Of 7.89 crore voters, forms were received from 7.24 crore. About 65 lakh names were deleted—22 lakh for being deceased, 36 lakh for having shifted away, and seven lakh for possible duplication.

On paper, this looks like a routine exercise to ensure fair elections. But for ordinary voters, it was as if the ECI said, “We moved some vehicles—go find out yourself if yours is missing.”

Why not simply say who’s gone? You would expect that for something as fundamental as the right to vote, the ECI would make the process transparent and easy. Instead of publishing simple, booth-wise lists of deletions on its own website, the ECI has only released the updated voter rolls showing who remains. That means you must sift through lakhs of names to see if yours has disappeared. Even a parking lot manager would put up a sign saying, “These vehicles were towed today.” The ECI, on the other hand, has made the “missing list” virtually invisible.

The exercise has shifted the burden to political parties—without giving them the tools In response to a plea filed before the Supreme Court by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) seeking booth-wise lists of voters whose enumeration forms weren’t received, the ECI replied that “political parties had been given an updated list of electors not included in the draft roll.” But there’s a catch:

1. These lists given to political parties do not include crucial details such as house numbers or voter ID numbers. Without them, party volunteers have no way of reliably identifying or informing voters-- it is like being told, “Here are the names, but good luck finding them; there’s no address!”

2. Ordinary voters are told: “Ask the political parties.”

This assumes every citizen can reach a party office or a volunteer, who might or might not have the time, resources, or even the right information to help. For those who have no direct connection to political parties, how realistic (or fair) is it to be told to depend on a political party for such a fundamental right?

Why make it so hard? Why is the ECI, instead of simply publishing booth-wise lists of deletions or proactively notifying those affected, passing the issue onto political parties and then providing those parties with incomplete data? 

Why is the ECI making it practically impossible for the average citizen to find out if they are still eligible to vote? 

Why should keeping track of one’s constitutional right become a bureaucratic scavenger hunt?

While the Election Commission
claims it has sent 5.7 crore SMS alerts, there is no clarity if these messages reached those whose names were actually deleted. A democracy cannot rely on indirect communication when the consequence is silent disenfranchisement of lakhs of voters. SMS alerts, therefore, don’t really fix the problem.

Instead of a clear, accessible process, Bihar’s exclusion drive has become a maze. No transparent online deletion lists, no direct notification, not even enough information in the lists given to parties. And all the while, the ECI hides behind legal technicalities: the law does not “require” them to publish these lists, so they simply do not.

Democracy demands clarity

The right to vote is the very bedrock of democracy—not a privilege or a gamble, but a guarantee. When finding out “Am I still on the voter roll?” becomes a needle-in-the-haystack exercise, transparency collapses and trust erodes. No citizens should have to beg for information or chase political middlemen for something as fundamental as their right to vote.

If inclusivity and credibility of elections matter, the ECI must:

Publish booth-wise lists of deleted voters with full identifying details (not just names) on their website.

Notify affected citizens directly, in a language and method they understand.

Until then, lakhs of eligible citizens risk losing their voice—not because of transparent rules, but because of official opaqueness and procedural neglect.
A truly vibrant democracy is one where every eligible voter knows their status, with clarity and dignity—without having to hunt through endless lists or go
knocking on the doors of political parties for help.

(The writer is the vice chairman of the data analytics department, Indian National Congress)