By Dr. Gyan Pathak
Election in Bihar is to be held before its Vidhan Sabha expires on November 22, 2025. All political parties are preparing for the great electoral battle. Bihar has been a very high-stake electoral battle for the PM Narendra Modi and the BJP, and this time it has already been reported that the party has planned his 200 or more election rallies in Bihar. The Election Commission of India has no option but to take the Bihar election more seriously than any other elections in the last decade.
It is in this general context, the Election Commission of India, has just given instruction to have a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of Electoral Rolls, which will begin from July 1, 2025. The last intensive revision was conducted with January 1, 2003, as a qualifying date. It means the electoral roll will be prepared afresh, and to get one’s name listed in the electoral roll, a citizen, especially those whose names were not in the voter list of 2023, will need to prove their citizenship.
The ECI has said that all electors must submit an enumeration form, and those registered after 2003 have to additionally provide documents establishing their citizenship, as per the guidelines and schedule specified by the Commission. A new declaration form will be added which will require proof of citizenship. Earlier, ECI’s Form 6, required simple declaration by applicant that they were citizen. The commission has also said that ‘special intensive revision’ of rolls, or SIR, will eventually cover all states and UTs. In Bihar, the final Revised Electoral Roll will be published on September 30, 2025.
This makes the decision of the ECI most controversial, since we have already seen in Assam, how difficult it was to prove citizenship not only for Bangladeshi infiltrators, but also for genuine Indian citizens. The draft National Register of Citizens (NRC) had excluded 40 lakh people, and the final list excluded 19 lakh, for they could not prove their citizenship, though 1971 was cutoff year. The issue is still not resolved after the first list came out in 2018, and the final list published in 2019.
This obviously is a reminder of the fact that lakhs of people would be deleted from the revised electoral roll of 2025, which is to be prepared just within a couple of months. ECI will give a limited time to the voter to prove his citizenship, which he can’t, as the Assam experience has already shown.
Additionally, it should be noted that all the persons born after 2023 in Bihar do not have even birth certificates. According to a Population Research Centre report, birth registration rate in Bihar reached only 80.3 per cent in 2018. It means lakhs of people are not even able to give their birth certificates, and therefore may suffer exclusion from the revised voter list.
ECI has clearly been influenced by the Union Government led by PM Narendra Modi, that has been playing the politics of NRC. “Proving the Citizenship” as condition for allowing inclusion in the Revised Electoral Roll, is just an indirect implementation of NRC, in the name of Special Revision of Electoral Roll. Since proving citizenship is a controversial matter, ECI must not have put it as a condition, until the issue is resolved.
The move of the ECI putting its head into citizenship issue on behalf of the Modi government not only shows that ECI has been compromised, but also indicates that the creation and maintenance of NRC for entire India is on the cards of the Modi government.
It is in this context TMC chief Mamata Banerjee’s statement is worth noting. She said that rural people will be left out because of revision. “And then you will include names of ‘borrowed voters to increase the list. This is because you are losing. Just because you will lose, you will add names from other States. This is more dangerous than NRC”, she said.
It should be noted that West Bengal is going to poll next year. She accused the BJP and the ECI of working in tandem and “targeting Bengal and its people”, especially Bengal’s youth under the guise of a new voter list verification process. She said, “This is very concerning. They have introduced a declaration form for getting your name on the voter list. For those born between July 1, 1987 and December 2, 2004, a new declaration form must be submitted along with the parents’ birth certificates to enrol their names in the voters’ list. The ECI says that parents’ birth certificates must be submitted. What is going on in the name of full enumeration? This is a document and declaration form from the ECI. There are many irregularities.”
Here comes the allegations of “Voters’ list manipulation” which prima facie seems to be possible, and that may go in favour of the BJP and NDA, as it has well allegedly in Maharashtra as alleged by the Leader of Opposition and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.
Congress has also opposed the new move of ECI, saying it risks the wilful exclusion of voters using state machinery, and termed it “devious”.
Since ECI has already said that starting with Bihar, Special Revision of Electoral Roll will be conducted across the country, we can presume that the condition of the proof of citizenship will be there in all such exercises. It is a new thing in revision of a voter list, for which ECI has framed new rules and guidelines, but providing not enough time to the voters to comply with. It is totally undemocratic attitude of the ECI.
The issue has already created a political storm in Bihar, and it is most likely to impact other states too. In a meeting of political parties with Bihar’s Chief Electoral Officer on Wednesday in Patna, representatives from the INDIA bloc — including the RJD, Congress, CPI(ML) Liberation, CPI and CPI(M) — unanimously rejected the SIR, calling it a ploy to exclude poor, rural and minority electors. (IPA Service)
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