The Election Commission released its first disaggregated breakdown of Bihar’s contentious voter roll revision exercise on Saturday, revealing that nearly 200,000 objections have been filed to exclude names while fewer than 30,000 applications seek inclusions.
The panel also revealed that 1.33 million first-time voters have applied for registration since August 1, which could take the final electoral roll significantly beyond the current 72.4 million people released in the draft earlier.
With only two days remaining before the September 1 deadline for claims and objections, the Commission disclosed that 197,000 exclusion requests have been submitted against 29,872 inclusion applications since the draft roll was published on August 1.
Previous daily updates had combined both categories, making it impossible to distinguish between applications for adding versus removing names.
The bulk of potential new registrations comes from 1,330,000 Form-6 applications filed by citizens who recently turned 18, of which more than 61,000 have been processed. Electoral Registration Officers have disposed of 33,771 other cases within the mandatory seven-day period.
Simultaneously, the commission has served notices to around 300,000 electors for providing “dubious” details or “inadequate credentials for citizenship,” potentially increasing deletions beyond the 6.5 million names already omitted from the draft roll.
{{/usCountry}}Simultaneously, the commission has served notices to around 300,000 electors for providing “dubious” details or “inadequate credentials for citizenship,” potentially increasing deletions beyond the 6.5 million names already omitted from the draft roll.
{{/usCountry}}Officials in the state election department said that the maximum notices served to ‘doubtful voters’ are concentrated in districts with suspected cross-border migration—Kishanganj, Saharsha, Supaul, West Champaran, Purnea, Katihar and Madhubani.
All these districts, especially Kishanganj, Katihar, Purnea and Supaul, also have a large chunk of Muslim population.
An election official who asked not to be named said notices were served to only those voters who have been ascertained as having “doubtful credentials” through field inquiry reports done by the respective district administrations.
Political parties have shown starkly different levels of engagement. The CPI(ML)-Liberation has filed 117 exclusion forms and 15 inclusion requests, while the Rashtriya Janata Dal submitted 10 inclusion applications. Ruling NDA parties—including the BJP, JD(U) and LJP(RV)—have filed zero claims.
The RJD alleged that while it submitted over 500 applications, only a few were accepted due to format requirements. The party has petitioned the Supreme Court for an extension of the deadline, with a hearing scheduled for September 1.
“The claims/objections filed by our booth-level agents is over 500 but only few are being accepted on the pretext that it has to be in a specific format,” said RJD spokesperson Chittaranjan Gagan.