CEC Gyanesh Kumar to visit Bihar tomorrow; poll dates likely to be announced

Gyanesh Kumar will visit Bihar along with Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi

Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar, along with two poll panel commissioners, is expected to visit Patna on October 4 and 5, according to reports.

A briefing meeting of central observers which includes general, police and expenditure, appointed by the Election Commission (EC) for Bihar elections is scheduled to be held at IIIDEM Dwarka in New Delhi on Friday. The poll dates are expected to be announced soon.

The EC has appointed 470 central observers for Bihar assembly polls, bypolls in eight states. The observers, comprising 320 Indian Administrative Service (IAS), 60 Indian Police Service (IPS), and 90 officers from the Indian Revenue Service (IRS), Indian Railway Accounts Service (IRAS), and Indian Civil Accounts Service (ICAS), will monitor the electoral process in Bihar and bye-elections in constituencies across Jammu & Kashmir, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Telangana, Punjab, Mizoram, and Odisha.

The term of the current Bihar assembly expires on November 22.

The EC on Tuesday published its final electoral roll in Bihar, containing details of 7.42 crore voters, a drop of more than 47 lakh since June, when the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) was launched.

The number of voters in the final roll is, however, higher than in the draft roll (7.24 crore), which came out in August after names of 65 lakh electors were knocked off as they were found to be "absent", "shifted" or "dead".

According to a statement issued by the Chief Electoral Officer of Bihar, names of 21.53 lakh "eligible voters", which got left out in the draft roll, were added since publication of the draft roll on August 1.

However, names of 3.66 lakh voters, which were in the draft roll, were also deleted in the course of the "claims and objections" phase.

The EC did not specify the grounds on which names in the draft roll were found to be of "ayogya" (ineligible) electors by the time of the publication of the final roll.

Other details like a district-wise break up, besides number of males, females and third-gender voters, and proportion of different age groups, were still awaited.

Earlier, the CEO had come out with a social media post, in which the EC was also tagged, to announce "in the light of Special Intensive Revision, the final electoral roll has been published on 30.09.2025. People can look up their names by clicking on the link voters.eci.gov.in".

(With inputs from agencies)