E-Paper
Bihar: 1.4mn voters added in post-SIR roll in one year
The current electoral roll — last updated on October 1— has 75.5 million voters, roughly 1.4 million names more than the 74.1 million in September 2025 roll.
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Bihar’s electoral roll swelled by nearly 1.4 million names since the publication of the post-special intensive revision (SIR) in Bihar on September 30 last year, officials attached with the state electoral officer(CEO) have said.
The current electoral roll — last updated on October 1 this year — has 75.5 million voters, roughly 1.4 million names more than the 74.1 million in the September 2025 roll, published after the end of SIR.
In this period, nearly 1.87 million people applied to be on the rolls using Form 6, the statutory application prescribed under the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, for a person seeking inclusion of their name in an electoral roll. Out of these, 1.4 million applications have been successful, the officials quoted above said.
“The number of enrolment goes up in an election year and then declines. It happens before the Lok Sabha, the legislative assembly or the panchayat polls,” said one of the officers quoted above on Wednesday.
The additional 1.4 million names comprise people seeking to return to the rolls, new voters and young voters enrolling for the first time, said the second officer.
The number of voters in Bihar went up by 4.19 million in 2023-24 — the year of Lok Sabha elections — and by 4.14 million in 2024-25, the year of assembly polls in the state.
Prior to that, in 2022-23, the voter increase was 1.3 million, while in 2025-26, the increase was 2.45 million, said a second officer.
All the 1.4 million people added to the post-SIR electoral roll, including new or first-time voters, have had to fill Form 6 for new enrolment.
“Most people who enrolled after the SIR have applied online on the ECI portal,” said Kumud Kumari, a booth-level officer of Raja Bazar area in Patna. “At present, there is no electoral activity whatsoever. We as teachers are currently busy with academic activities in schools. Fresh enrolment to the voter list generally happens before elections through online applications.”
The three-month SIR exercise in Bihar undertaken between June 25 and September 30, 2025 — the first in the country in the current series — initially removed 6.56 million people from the rolls, after 2.23 million voters were reported dead, 3.64 million shifted, and 0.68 million voters found to have their names at more than one location, out of the 78.9 million voters reported before the exercise.
After the one-month scrutiny period between August 1 and September 1, 2025, during which aggrieved voters had to submit claims and objections, 2.15 million voters were added to the list and another 0.36 million removed, taking the number of electorate in the state to 74.1 million after the SIR.
Bihar has not had a summary revision of the electoral roll since the 2025 SIR.
In Kishanganj’s Thakurganj nagar panchayat, a booth-level officer received around 3,600 applications over the past year and recommended about 636 names for inclusion after verification. The BLO is also examining seven applications flagged as potential duplicates by the mobile application linked to the EC’s Demographic Similar Entry (DSE) software, which flags entries with similarities in names, fathers’ names and age.
“I try my best to verify the documents of each voter before recommending the name to the ERO. The ERO then scrutinises it at his level before adding the voter,” said the BLO, requesting anonymity.
In Patna, Siddheshwar Kumar Sharma, a government schoolteacher and BLO at booth No. 419 at the blind school in Kadamkuan, received about 24 applications over the past year.
The development comes days after ECI told state election authorities that eligible citizens seeking enrolment need not submit a separate declaration – which seeks details of parental linkage to the previous SIR – along with Form 6.
The Bihar CEO’s office has also been asked to conduct a campaign to identify and enrol first-time and left-out voters, according to a communication issued after a video conference of electoral officers on October 1.
“Video conferences with EROs and district magistrates have been completed. Currently, training and orientation of officials is being done. We will begin the campaign this week itself,” said the second officer quoted above.
