Over 65 Lakh Voters Excluded from Bihar’s Draft Electoral Roll

The Election Commission on Friday released data from its Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise in Bihar, revealing that over 65 lakh voter enumeration forms have been excluded from the state’s draft electoral roll. The comprehensive clean-up has reduced the total number of registered voters in Bihar from 7.9 crore to 7.24 crore.

The commission attributed the significant reduction to several factors, including voters who have died, permanently moved out of the state, could not be found at their registered addresses, or were found to be enrolled in more than one location. The SIR exercise was conducted across all 243 assembly constituencies and 90,817 polling stations in the state.

A detailed breakdown of the 65 lakh excluded forms shows that 22.34 lakh individuals have passed away, 36.28 lakh have either permanently shifted or could not be located, and another 7.01 lakh were identified as duplicate entries. State capital Patna recorded the highest number of exclusions with 3.95 lakh, followed by Madhubani with 3.52 lakh, East Champaran with 3.16 lakh, and Gopalganj with 3.10 lakh.

The publication of the draft roll comes amid criticism from opposition parties, who have alleged that the revision exercise was aimed at benefiting the ruling NDA in the upcoming Bihar Assembly elections. The Election Commission has now initiated a “claims and objections” phase, which will remain open until September 1. This allows individuals who believe their names have been wrongly deleted to apply for reinstatement. A final electoral list will be published only after this redressal period is complete.

The draft electoral rolls have been made available on the poll panel’s website and shared with all political parties across Bihar’s 38 districts.