Final Bihar Voter List Likely Today By 3 PM; Poll Schedule Expected by Oct 7

The Election Commission of India (ECI) is set to publish the final voter list for the Bihar Assembly elections today, a crucial step that paves the way for the announcement of the poll schedule, which is expected by October 6-7 . The release of the final rolls comes after a highly contentious Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise, which has been slammed by the Opposition as an attempt at mass disenfranchisement and is currently under the scanner of the Supreme Court.The SIR, conducted in Bihar after a 22-year gap, has been at the heart of a major political firestorm.

Opposition parties, led by Congress’s Rahul Gandhi and RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav, have alleged that the exercise is a “vote theft” operation aimed at removing poor and minority voters from the rolls, a charge the EC has vehemently denied. The controversy escalated to the Supreme Court, where a bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi warned that they would not hesitate to scrap the entire voter list if irregularities were found . The court has scheduled the next hearing for October 7 .

The ECI has defended the SIR as a necessary process to clean up electoral rolls that haven’t been intensively revised for over two decades. The final list will be published around 3 pm today.With the voter list finalized, all eyes are now on the poll schedule announcement. Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar, along with Election Commissioners Dr. SS Sandhu and Vineet Joshi, is scheduled to visit Bihar on October 4-5 to review the state’s poll preparedness.

This high-level visit, following a meeting of poll observers in Delhi on October 3, strongly suggests that the election dates for the 243-member assembly, whose term ends on November 22, will be announced shortly after the review is complete .