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Informist, Wednesday, Jul. 2, 2025

 

NEW DELHI – A delegation of Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance Wednesday met the Election Commission of India in New Delhi and opposed the special intensive revision of Bihar's electoral roll few months before assembly elections. The Bihar elections are scheduled in Oct–Nov. The opposition members requested the poll panel to postpone the special intensive revision in the state.

 

The delegation comprising around 20 members from 11 parties held a meeting with the poll panel officials for nearly three hours and conveyed their apprehensions over the timing of the electoral role revision exercise. Addressing media after the meeting, senior Congress leader and Rajya Sabha member Abhishek Manu Singhvi said the last revision was held in 2003, a year before the Lok Sabha elections and two years before the Bihar assembly elections. He said that the poll body wants to conduct the exercise in two months now.

 

"Firstly, the last revision was in 2003. For 22 years, more than four of five Bihar elections have happened. Were all those elections faulty? ...Today you are having in July, a maximum period of one or two months for an electoral revision exercise of the second largest electoral populated state in India, called Bihar," Singhvi said.

 

The delegation also opposed the poll panel's decision to ask for birth certificates during the exercise. The senior Congress leader termed the exercise the worst attack on the basic structure of the Constitution. He said that an illegal inclusion or exclusion of even a single voter creates a non-level playing field which affects democracy and elections.

 

"...For the first time, you are saying that a person's name will not be considered if one doesn't have a birth certificate. In one category, one also needs the parents' birth certificates if you are born between 1987 and 2012. We said that there are so many poor, and minorities, backward in Bihar. Will they keep running around for papers? This is against a level-playing field in a democracy," he said.

 

Rashtriya Janata Dal leader and Rajya Sabha Manoj Jha alleged that the exercise is a conspiracy to evict voters. He said that the poll panel had no answer when the opposition parties asked the reason to conduct the exercise just before Bihar elections.

 

Communist Party of India General Secretary D. Raja said that the delegation asked the commission to postpone the revision exercise as Bihar will face floods, heavy rains, and natural calamities. He said that it will be difficult for the people to produce the documents the authorities have been asking under the exercise. Raja said that the elections can be held on the basis of electoral rolls, which were used for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. He said that the poll panel did not show willingness to reconsider its decision.

 

On Saturday, the election commission said that the special intensive revision exercise has already started successfully in Bihar for verifying the eligibility of each elector with full participation of all political parties.

 

According to the poll panel, the objective of an intensified revision is to ensure that the names of all eligible citizens are included in the electoral roll so as to enable them to exercise their franchise, no ineligible voter is included in the electoral rolls and also to introduce complete transparency in the process of addition or deletion of electors in the electoral rolls. The last intensive revision for Bihar was conducted by the commission in the year 2003.

 

Bihar has 78.96 million electors, of which 49.6 million are already in the last intensive revision of electoral roll. These electors will simply have to verify themselves by filling the enumeration form.  End

 

Reported by Kuldeep Singh

Edited by Ashish Shirke

 

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