Bihar's 65-lakh question

The Election Commission of India’s month-long charade of ‘fixing’ the voter rolls of Bihar — an exercise now better known as the ‘Special Intensive Revision’ — has reached its first big milestone. The all-new draft voter rolls are out, and the list, as expected, has set the cat among the pigeons. For no less than 65 lakh names have gone missing from the January 2025 list.

The ECI tells us these are names of people who are either dead or have migrated permanently or are ‘duplicates’. But it won’t make that list available separately, nor the draft rolls in a machine-readable format to make it possible to cross-check for errors or alleged mischief.

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The opposition parties are understandably alarmed — it wasn’t that long ago that the ECI presided over another sleight-of-hand revision in the voter rolls: in Maharashtra, where 40 lakh new voters were added in the space of five months (between the Lok Sabha elections in May 2024 and the state assembly elections in November the same year).

The Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) has petitioned the Supreme Court, urging that it direct the ECI to make available a booth-wise list of deleted names, with reasons for the deletions.

We spoke to ADR founder Jagdeep S. Chhokar to understand what to expect next. Edited excerpts:

While the number of voters in Maharashtra and Karnataka increased significantly, in Bihar it has dropped drastically. How do you see this?

Only those responsible for this can explain the reasons. But from what I can see, the intent behind this exercise appears questionable.

Is there any rationale or system behind what seems like a chaotic move?

I have no idea what the method behind the madness might be. But one thing is certain — the very spirit of the electoral process in our country seems to be getting eroded.

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At the moment, the most pressing question is about the 65 lakh voters whose names have been deleted. You have even approached the Supreme Court seeking a complete list of the deleted names. What exactly is the mystery surrounding these 65 lakh voters? And if the list is made public, what purpose will it serve?

What that purpose will be, and what can be uncovered, will only become clear once the full information is made available. The Election Commission does share some data, but never in its entirety.

When information is partial, it naturally raises suspicions and creates the need for more clarity. This cycle keeps repeating itself.

At the very least, people deserve to know why their names were deleted. In the partial list of 65 lakh voters released so far, there is no explanation—only a statement that the names have been removed. The Supreme Court asked us to produce 15 such examples of people who are alive but were declared dead and had their names struck off.

The current list doesn’t mention the reasons for deletion. Striking a name off is a legal process. A notice must be issued. The person concerned must be given a chance to respond. But we don’t know how this was done. That’s why we intend to ask: Who was served notice? What kind of notice was it? What procedure was followed in cases marked ‘deceased’?

Earlier, we used to be told how many first-time voters were added to the rolls. This time, however, no such figure has been provided. One wonders: Where have all the new voters gone?

How would I know where they’ve gone? Only those responsible for making them disappear can answer that.

Typically, the voter list grows every year. Life expectancy is increasing, and the birth rate still exceeds the death rate. So naturally, new voters get added every year. In fact, this used to be celebrated in the past.

But now, it seems as though the dead are being celebrated.

I even heard someone say the other day that earlier, voters used to choose the government; now the government is choosing the voters. Will the Supreme Court be asked to determine who qualifies as a ‘true Indian’? And will the rest of us merely stand by and watch?

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Looking at the Election Commission’s current data, it appears as if Bihar’s population is shrinking.

Are we to believe that 22–25 lakh people died in just six months, and another 37 lakh left the state?

If that’s true, Bihar will soon be empty.

The ECI is justifying its actions by citing the role of booth-level agents (BLAs). Isn’t this essentially firing from someone else’s shoulder?

Involving BLAs in this process is legally questionable. It raises serious concerns. Earlier, there were frequent allegations that political parties tried to manipulate voter lists by adding their own supporters. Assigning this critical responsibility to political parties amounts to the ECI outsourcing its own constitutional duty.

This delegation of power essentially breaks the link between the Election Commission and the citizen.

It is important to remember that the term ‘political party’ did not even figure originally in the Indian Constitution. It was only formally recognised with the introduction of the anti-defection law.

For years, we have heard complaints that political parties were inserting fake names into the voter rolls. Now, shockingly, they are being officially asked to do this.

Why doesn’t the ECI provide machine-readable data? What is the difficulty?

There should be no problem at all. Former chief election commissioner Rajiv Kumar himself used to say that their guiding principles are ‘Disclosure, Disclosure, Disclosure’. If that is true, why not release it?

The situation now is such that even the draft electoral rolls provided cannot be scanned. Place the paper on a scanner and it comes out blank — clearly, some mechanism has been put in place to prevent scanning. I fail to understand why there is such fear of sharing information.

And yet, they claim to be transparent. Well, everyone can see the kind of ‘transparency’ on display.

If everything were discussed openly and shown to the public, there would be no room for doubt.

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