E-Paper
ECI says 'large number' of foreigners found during Bihar voter list revision
The names of illegal migrants will not be included in the final electoral roll to be published on September 30 after a proper enquiry post August 1.
Election commission officials on Sunday claimed that field-level functionaries of the ECI have found "a large number of people" from Nepal, Bangladesh, and Myanmar during house-to-house visits made for the ongoing intensive review of the voters' list in Bihar.
According to a PTI report, the names of illegal migrants will not be included in the final electoral roll to be published on September 30 after a proper enquiry into such people is conducted after August 1.
Citing ground reports, ECI officials said that booth-level officers found "a large number" of people from Nepal, Bangladesh, and Myanmar during house-to-house visits.
The Election Commission will eventually carry out a special intensive revision of electoral rolls across India to weed out foreign illegal migrants by checking their place of birth, the PTI report added.
Meanwhile, the ECI said that as of Saturday evening, 80.11 percent of electors in Bihar had submitted their forms. The commission is moving ahead to complete the collection of Enumeration Forms (EFs) before the stipulated time, July 25.
The Bihar assembly polls are due in October or November this year, and the voter list revision has already become a major topic in state politics.
Assembly polls in five other states—Assam, Kerala, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal—are due in 2026.
The move assumes significance in the wake of a crackdown in various states on illegal foreign migrants, including from Bangladesh and Myanmar.
Opposition flags Bihar voter list revision
The opposition parties have campaigned against the voter list revision in Bihar, with the leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, recently joining RJD leader Tejaswi Yadav in a rally in Purnea.
Congress has called the exercise ‘dangerous and bizarre’. Party leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi said EC’s plan to consider voters who were added after 2003 as “suspects” was an “arbitrary and legally questionable move.” He made the remarks while addressing a press conference at Indira Bhavan, the Congress headquarters, on Saturday.
The Supreme Court on Thursday asked the ECI to also consider Aadhaar cards, voter IDs and ration cards, as acceptable proof of eligibility for inclusion in electoral rolls in its ongoing revision of the list, even as it agreed to examine whether the poll body’s exercise violated legal provisions or could potentially lead to mass disenfranchisement ahead of assembly elections due later this year.
