Bihar electoral draft roll: EC says no demand raised by any party to include or remove names so far

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The Election Commission on Sunday said no political party in Bihar has so far approached it for inclusion or removal of names from the draft electoral roll published on August 1.

The EC said that between 3 PM on August 1 and 3 PM on August 3 (Sunday), no demand under claims and objections has been received.

But individually, 941 claims and objections have been received from voters for the inclusion of names or for the removal of those they claim are ineligible from the voter list.

Political parties and voters have one month till September 1 to demand inclusion or removal of names from the voter list.

The ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral roll in Bihar has seen opposition parties attacking the EC, alleging that the exercise will deny voting rights to crores of eligible persons for want of documents.

The EC maintains that it has ensured that no eligible person will be left out of the final electoral roll to be published on September 30.

Meanwhile, according to EC data analysed by Scroll, women and residents of Muslim-majority districts constituted the largest share of deletions from Bihar’s draft electoral roll, published on August 1 following a Special Intensive Revision (SIR).

Out of approximately 6.56 million names removed, 55 per cent were women, even though women represent only 47.7 per cent of the state's electorate. In 43 out of 243 assembly constituencies, more than 60 per cent of deletions involved women.

The highest rate of female deletions was recorded in Rajpur (Kaimur district), which is a Scheduled Caste reserved seat, where 69 per cent of exclusions were women, the report said.

Among districts with significant Muslim populations, Purnia, Kishanganj, Madhubani, Bhagalpur, and Sitamarhi were prominently featured among the top ten for voter name deletions.

In Purnia, where Muslims make up roughly 38.5 per cent of the population, over 273,000 names were removed. Madhubani had 352,000 deletions, East Champaran saw 316,000, and Sitamarhi accounted for 245,000 deletions.

The Election Commission clarified that deletions occurred for several reasons, including deaths (about 2.2 million), permanent migration or being untraceable (about 3.6 million), and multiple enrollments (about 700,000), the report added.

With inputs from PTI