Questions that Bihar SIR brings to the fore

I would argue that the most important issue that will determine how I view the special intensive revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls presently underway in Bihar is the number of people whose names have been deleted or — and mark this carefully — have failed to be included.

- Karan Thapar

I fear the total could be considerably greater than what we've been told. Let's look at the details to see if you share my concern.

On August 1, the Election Commission of India (ECI) released the draft rolls confirming that 6.56 million names have been deleted, nearly 9% of those who were there before the exercise began. This is already disturbing.

As HT has earlier revealed, this means that as things stand there are fewer people registered to vote in Bihar than was the case during the 2024 national elections and the 2020 assembly elections. In fact, with the exception of the two assembly elections of 2005, the total number of registered voters in Bihar has increased with every election since 1977. That won't be the case when the assembly elections are held later this year.