Bihar elections: Congress reignites ‘vote chori’ claims, questions ECI over deleted names | India News
NEW DELHI: Congress on Wednesday raised questions with the Election Commission of India (ECI) following its ‘analysis’ of Bihar’s voter list after the Special Intensive Revision (SIR). In a statement, the party’s Empowered Action Group of Leaders and Experts (EAGLE) said the ECI released the final list of 7.42 crore registered voters for the upcoming Bihar assembly elections, but it did not provide a machine-readable version of the voter list, which made analysis difficult. It asked why ECI was hesitant to make the list easier to analyse.
Based on a preliminary study, Congress highlighted several issues. It said that for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Bihar had 7.72 crore registered voters, meaning 30 lakh people from that list were now missing from the assembly voter list, the party alleged. The party also noted that while the ECI added 21.53 lakh voters in Bihar, Form 6 was available for only 16.93 lakh, leaving 4.6 lakh unaccounted for. In total, 67.3 lakh voters were deleted during SIR, with over one-tenth of these deletions in just 15 assembly constituencies, it said. Congress questioned why the ECI had not made the final list of deleted voters public by booth and category.The party also said its analysis found over 5 lakh duplicate entries in the final list, questioning the effectiveness of the SIR exercise. It said that the final electoral roll should be frozen on the last date of nomination, and no supplementary lists should change the voter base, insisting that elections be held strictly on the finalised list.Meanwhile, ECI on Tuesday told the Supreme Court that all political parties have expressed satisfaction with the exercise and no appeals have been filed challenging the deletions. When asked on Monday about the number of illegal foreign immigrants removed from Bihar’s electoral rolls during the SIR, chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar did not provide a figure, saying the EC does not have that data field.The Bihar assembly polls will take place in two phases on November 6 and 11. The counting of votes will take place on November 14.
