Bihar’s pre-election focal point is the Election Commission, which makes for a strange campaign

The ECI maintains it has embarked on the task of cleaning the electoral rolls, as many parties expressed doubts over its veracity following recent assembly polls.

By autumn this year, one of India’s most politically conscious states, Bihar, will hold elections for a new government. However, in the run-up to the elections this year, the decision by the Election Commission of India to conduct Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the nearly eight crore registered voters stirred the hornet’s nest.

Political parties opposed to the governing Janata Dal-United-Bharatiya Janata Party government in the state vigorously attacked the timing and the short time span in which the entire exercise was undertaken by the poll body. The combined opposition, under the banner of Congress-led Indian National Inclusive Developmental Alliance, is up in arms in Bihar and in Delhi, where it is demanding a discussion on SIR and has stalled the proceedings of the monsoon session of Parliament.

After staging a protest inside the Parliament House complex, MPs of the I.N.D.I. alliance decided on an unusual confrontationist plan on August 11 by walking to the ECI on Ashoka Road seeking answers to the multiple issues being raised.

The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government is in no mood to accommodate the demand for a discussion.  The parliamentary managers of the governing alliance cite a decades-old ruling in the Lok Sabha to reject such a discussion on the autonomous ECI. Further, they insisted SIR cannot be debated since the matter was under the consideration of the Supreme Court.

On the other hand, the I.N.D.I. Alliance, along with the Aam Aadmi Party, quoted another ruling by a former Rajya Sabha Chairman, underscoring the House can discuss any issue under the sun. The opposition also disagreed with the government’s interpretation of the matter being ‘sub-judice. The logjam continues. It came up with a long list of discussions held in Parliament over the decades around the conduct of elections. The basic thrust is that it is Parliament that makes the laws that are acted upon.

ECI and its work

The ECI, mandated to conduct free and fair elections, maintains it has embarked on the task of cleaning the electoral rolls, as many parties expressed doubts over its veracity following recent assembly polls. At the end of the intensive enumeration, it said some 99 percent of electors were covered, and the exercise showed 22.34 lakh voters deceased, 7.01 lakh voters registered in more than one place, and 32.28 lakh either moved away permanently or remain untraced.  The poll body kept a window open till the end of August to accommodate objections over the names published in the August 1, 2025, draft rolls.

Subsequent news reports from the state identified some districts where the deletions occurred, suggesting that a few where minorities and other communities dominated were affected following the SIR. The opposition charged that underprivileged, tribals, and Dalits were at the receiving end, as also migrants, in a state where a large majority of people work in other states for a livelihood.

The 2011 Census data said that in total, there were 74.54 lakh migrants from Bihar across 34 states and Union Territories. It said the 5.43 crore inter-state migrants account for 4.5 percent of the country’s population, and those migrating out of Bihar account for 7.2 percent of the state’s population. This data would change once the new Census is completed.

The opposition cited the deletion of 65 lakh names from the last updated list of nearly 7.9 crore people eligible to take part in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. The apprehension is of the denial of the right to vote of any adult citizen registered in a state.

The debate is still taking shape in the public domain, while the apex court is keeping a watch on the situation and has directed the ECI to share information on those whose names have been struck off the rolls. The court earlier said it could intervene if the litigants could produce a handful of those people who were removed from the draft list as dead.

In its daily update, since the publication of the draft rolls, the ECI declared that as of Tuesday, none of the 1.60 lakh block-level agents of the political parties had filed any objection.  It said the list of those dead, migrated, or registered at two places who could not be contacted after three rounds was shared with these agents before finalising the draft rolls.

The ECI, which carries out periodic campaigns to attract and encourage voters to take part in this festival of democracy, has the responsibility of ensuring that no genuine voter is disenfranchised and barred from electing a representative.

Political chessboard being readied

A political slugfest over the exercise is underway. Dubbing the SIR as ‘Votebandi’ to rhyme with the 2016 demonetisation or ‘Notebandi’ exercise, the opposition parties are calling into question the entire SIR. That the ECI did not accept Adhaar or Ration Card as a valid document during verification was also raised by political parties in the Supreme Court.

Opposition parties in the state, including the Rashtriya Janata Dal, the Congress, and the Left Parties, are working on a strategy to counter the charge from members of the governing coalition partners. The counter accusation is that the previous electoral rolls contained several Bangladeshi and other foreign nationals who were enrolled.

While it can be nobody’s case that the ECI’s task of ensuring a clean electoral roll is vital for parliamentary democracy, by raising questions on the methodology and procedure adopted, the opposition is asking the poll body to seek a more transparent method. The ECI in the past has faced questions, but its impartiality was not questioned as it is being done now.

Recently, RJD leader and former Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav created a flutter, stating that in the absence of its questions not being addressed, the opposition is keeping an option open – to boycott the assembly polls. Such a move will not augur well for India, which takes credit as the mother of democracy.