Opinion Exclusion and ambiguity in Bihar’s final voter rolls expose an institutional crisis

When challenged, the ECI claimed that omissions from the draft roll were not wrongful deletions. Yet, it didn’t publish a separate list of excluded voters until the Supreme Court intervened, reminding the Commission that citizens have a constitutional right to know why their names were removed.

Even then, the process of rectification was rendered needlessly convoluted. Booth-level agents (BLAs) representing opposition parties faced deliberate non-cooperation from Booth Level Officers (BLOs) appointed by the ECI, who routinely refused to accept complaints or supporting documents. This led to the ECI’s claims that “no complaints were received from political parties”.

The Congress debunked this narrative by submitting nearly 89 lakh complaints directly to district administrations via BLA-I (at District Congress Committee). But instead of treating this as an opportunity to ensure the integrity of the electoral rolls, the ECI dismissed the complaints on the technical pretext that they had not been filed in the “prescribed” format through BLA-II (at the booth level, appointed by BLA-I). The refusal exposed the Commission’s priorities: Not ensuring a clean roll but defaming opposition parties, especially Congress, while shielding its own questionable procedures from scrutiny.

Now the final voter list is out, and it raises more questions than it answers. Out of 7.24 crore voters in the draft roll, 3.66 lakh were removed and 21.53 lakh added, bringing the final total to 7.42 crore. But the numbers don’t add up. The ECI itself admitted that from August 1 to September 1, 2025, it had received 16,56,886 Form 6 applications and 36,475 inclusion claims, a total of 16,93,361. Even if all of these were accepted, the maximum additions possible should have been about 16.9 lakh. Instead, the Commission reported adding 21.53 lakh, a mysterious increase of around 4.6 lakh names. Who are these ghost-voters who were added without ever applying for inclusion?

Equally troubling is the concealment of deletion data. The ECI had set five criteria for deletion: Death, transfer, duplicate entries, missing persons, and ineligibility. Yet in its final bulletin, it does not disclose how many voters were deleted under each category. On what basis did the Commission decide that a voter had died, shifted, or was ineligible? Where is the evidence? Between August 1 and September 1, 2025, the Commission received about 2.17 lakh applications for exclusion. Yet 3.66 lakh voters were ultimately removed. How were these extra deletions carried out, and under what justification? The Commission had explicitly stated that no name could be deleted without a formal “speaking order” by the ERO/AERO, following an enquiry and after giving the voter a fair opportunity to respond. But where are these orders? Were they displayed publicly at Panchayat offices, published online, or handed to affected voters?

The refusal to answer these basic questions undermines the Commission’s credibility. Simultaneously, the BJP has also been using hateful rhetoric of the presence of “infiltrators” and “Bangladeshi’s” to justify the SIR. In parallel, the Commission is tight-lipped and has provided no official account of the number of these infiltrators who have been omitted from the electoral rolls during the process.

Ground-level reports make clear that this opacity in SIR is not accidental. Voting is not a technical formality; it is the defining act of political belonging. To strip a citizen of this right while keeping them subject to taxation, surveillance, and state authority is to suspend their political existence while retaining them as governed subjects. They are reduced to “bare citizens”: legally present, but politically null. What makes this disenfranchisement particularly insidious is its presentation as routine administration.

The shifting of burdens onto citizens, the demand for unnecessary documents, unexplained deletions, and the refusal to provide reasons are all presented as neutral procedures. But these procedures redraw the electorate and restructure political power. Bureaucracy becomes the mask behind which disenfranchisement operates.

The reality is stark: By failing to act impartially, by ignoring procedural safeguards, the ECI has allowed itself to be weaponised for partisan advantage. The BJP, in turn, has exploited this institution to manipulate the electorate, targeting specific communities and opposition supporters for erasure. Bihar is the pilot project of this strategy. Tomorrow it may be West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, or Maharashtra. Mass exclusions dressed as technical corrections, unexplained additions, opaque deletions, and bureaucratic hurdles are now the machinery of disenfranchisement. This is India’s warning.

The question is no longer just who governs, but who is even allowed to be counted as the people. With the Election Commission reduced to a handmaiden of the BJP’s electoral machinery, elections are no longer contests of democracy; they are engineered outcomes designed to entrench power. And now the responsibility falls on every citizen, every opposition leader, and every institution committed to the Constitution: To resist, to protest, to demand transparency and accountability.

Democracy does not survive the apathy of its people. If this collusion between the BJP and a compromised Election Commission is allowed to continue unchecked, India will not merely lose elections — it will lose the very idea of itself as a free, fair, and representative democracy. The time to act is now.

The writer is chairman, media and publicity department, All India Congress Committee