Millions May Lose Voting Right After Roll Revision: Bihar Oppn

Millions of families in the state do not have documents as being asked to establish their place of birth or date of birth for inclusion in the electoral rolls. CHITTARANJAN GAGAN, RJD leader

- Anirban Guha Roy

PATNA: The Opposition INDIA bloc, that is known as Mahagathbandhan (Grand Alliance) in Bihar, is all set to mount protest campaign against the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar launched by Election Commission of India (ECI) from June 25. The Opposition is of the view that the exercise is totally impractical and would lead to omission of names of lakhs (millions) of voters who cannot provide necessary documents to establish date of birth and/or place of birth as mandated for electors.

The ECI has launched the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls from June 25 till July 26 for door-to-door verification of voters by mandating that electors (barring those whose names were included in 2003 rolls) would have to provide documents to support their place of birth and/or date of birth and also their parents depending on their birth year.

The SIR was last done in Bihar in 2003. The new SIR is aimed at weeding out duplicate names of electors, fake voters and also dead voters from the rolls and sanitise the voters' list which would be updated and published on 30-09-2025.