The macro figures issued by the Election Commission of India on September 30 on the conclusion of Bihar Special Intensive Revision (SIR) conceal more than they reveal. We do not know how many of those electors whose names were wrongfully deleted in July have succeeded in finding their way back in this September 30 'final list'. We do not know what happened to the 3 lakh voters who had been sent notice to substantiate their documents. Did they not submit their Aadhaar cards? Did the EC accept Aadhaar as a stand-alone document after being explicitly asked by the Supreme Court?
We do not know how many mischievously targeted deletion attempts could be foiled and how many succeeded in their deletion design! We do not know how many of the Form 6 entrants are actually new first-time voters and how many are old voters made new! We do not know how many of the 16 lakh addresses sheltering more than ten voters were actually verified.
Amid the rushed reporting on the conclusion of SIR, several questions have emerged. According to a Hindustan Times report on October 1, there may be further deletion of women voters in the SIR process. The sex ratio in Bihar's electoral roll was 914 female voters per 1,000 male voters on January 1, 2025. After three months of SIR, the ratio has dropped to 892! Why has SIR disproportionately affected Bihar's women voters? Is it due to microfinance terror-induced migration?
But we do know that in spite of inclusion of more than two million presumably new voters, the electorate size of Bihar has shrunk by close to five million. Let the EC now tell us how many foreign nationals it found in Bihar's electoral roll. There was only a circular telling us about the launch of the SIR. And now again there's only a Press Note signed by an Assistant Director. Why is the ECI not holding a press conference to give us some clarity about such a massive and unprecedented exercise?
-- Dipankar Bhattachrya, General Secretary, CPI(ML) Liberation
