Raising questions over the special intensive revision (SIR) in Bihar, a Congress panel Wednesday asked why the Election Commission has not made the final list of all deleted voters available and claimed that there are more than five lakh duplicate voters in the final voter list. The EAGLE committee, formed in February, has been tasked by the party with monitoring elections and the poll panel. The EC released a final list of 7.42 crore registered voters for the Bihar elections, it said. For the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, there were 7.72 crore registered voters, which means, on a net basis, 30 lakh people are no longer voters for the Assembly election, the EAGLE group said. In a post on X, the Chief Electoral Officer of Bihar said on Wednesday that the District Magistrates had not received any appeals against the decisions to include or delete any names by Electoral Registration Officers as of Wednesday. As per Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, an appeal can be filed with the DM within 15 days of the order of the ERO. The Congress panel asked: “ECI claims 21.53 lakh voters were added in Bihar, but Form 6 is e for only 16.93 lakh. Where are the remaining 4.6 lakh forms?” In total, 67.3 lakh voters have been deleted in the SIR exercise and over one-tenth of these deletions are in just 15 Assembly seats, it claimed. Why has the EC not made available the final list of all deleted voters and their details by booth and category, the panel asked. The panel claimed there are more than five lakh duplicate (same name, relative name, age,gender and address) voters in the final list published. “What was the point of SIR if there are still more than 5 lakh duplicates? How will ECI verify and clean these now?” it asked.
