Patna: A bureaucratic exercise has turned into a full-blown political slugfest in Bihar, with the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls drawing cheers from some and outrage from others. With assembly elections just months away, the controversy has acquired all the makings of a campaign-season flashpoint.
The ECI insists the revision is routine housekeeping — a way to clean the rolls, remove duplicate entries, and ensure that only eligible voters remain. Under SIR, those whose names did not feature in the 2003 intensive revision must submit one of eleven approved documents by July 25 to keep their names on the list. Strikingly, Aadhaar cards, ration cards, and even voter ID cards are not among them.
That exclusion is precisely what the opposition has latched onto. Leaders from the INDIA bloc have branded the exercise “vote chori” — vote theft — alleging that lakhs of poor, migrant, and minority voters risk being dropped. “It’s not a clean-up, it’s a clear-out,” one Congress leader fumed at a Patna press conference.
The dispute spilled onto the streets on August 11, when Rahul Gandhi and a clutch of opposition MPs marched from Parliament towards the Election Commission’s office. Police stopped them midway, detaining several. Days later, Gandhi staged a political theatre of his own — hosting tea for seven people officially recorded as “dead” on the voter list.
It’s not just activists crying foul. Oddities have surfaced across the state — none more talked-about than Minta Devi from Siwan, whose voter record listed her age as 124. She was born in 1990. Opposition protesters wore “124 Not Out” T-shirts in her honour, though she later criticised politicians for using her image without consent.
Petitioners before the Supreme Court have gone further, alleging that even deceased citizens have had SIR forms “filled” in their names, often with Booth Level Officers signing off. CPI-ML has demanded the ECI publish the full list of the 65 lakh voters removed so far.
The Commission, however, has found powerful backing in the Supreme Court, which ruled that electoral rolls “cannot remain static” and that SIR falls squarely within its legal powers. The court also noted that eleven identity proofs are allowed this time, up from seven in earlier summary revisions — a change it deemed more “voter-friendly.”
Still, the optics are awkward. For a state where voter ID cards are nearly universal, telling residents they aren’t valid proof for staying on the rolls feels counter-intuitive. And with Bihar’s political margins often razor-thin, any whiff of disenfranchisement is bound to become a campaign weapon.
As the deadline looms, one question hangs over Bihar’s political landscape: is SIR a safeguard for democracy or a gatekeeper against it? By the time voters — or those left on the list — head to the polls, that answer could decide much more than a paperwork dispute.
