Bihar SIR ends, final roll lists 74.2 million names

The Election Commission of India (ECI) published the final electoral list for Bihar comprising 74.2 million voters, roughly 4.7 million names lighter than at the beginning of the controversial special intensive revision that ended on Tuesday.

- Subhash Pathak, Vrinda Tulsian and Nishant Ranjan

The draft roll published on August 1 after the first phase of the SIR was completed comprised 72.4 million people, dropping 6.56 million names from the rolls published on January 1 this year. In the two-month-long verification of documents and submission of objections process, another 366,000 names were excised while 2.15 million names were added, the ECI statement said.

In all, at the end of the controversial process, the number of deletions stood at 6.9 million names and the number of additions stood at 2.15 million. To be sure, the number of voters added comprised both first-time voters and those who successfully applied for their names to be included after being dropped in the August 1 rolls. ECI didn’t provide a separate breakup for these.

"Election Commission of India (ECI) congratulates people of Bihar, election officials, political parties and other key stakeholders on the successful completion of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar," the poll watchdog said in a statement.

The patterns analysed by HT in the August 1 draft roll were largely consistent with those in Tuesday's document. The eastern Bihar district of Gopalganj marked by seasonal riverine floods, distress migration and marriage links across the state border with Uttar Pradesh - saw the maximum share of deletions in both the August 1 and September 30 rolls. Similarly, more female names were deleted from the rolls than male names.

The number of deletions are among the largest single removal of voters from any state's electoral rolls in recent memory, a move the poll panel has defended as being necessary in the Supreme Court to maintain the sanctity of elections. The completion of the process is also the final stage before the high-stakes assembly elections are announced likely in the next two weeks.

The exercise began on July 1.