Bihar SIR: Trinamool Congress MP Saket Gokhale slams electoral roll revision; claims 1.26 crore voters 'deleted'

The Hindu

3 days ago

Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Saket Gokhale on Monday (July 27, 2025) said 1.26 crore voters have been "deleted" from Bihar's electoral rolls following the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise and challenged the government to a debate on the issue in Parliament.
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Sharing the Election Commission's SIR data in a post on X, Mr. Gokhale said the poll panel "conveniently" did not share any information regarding its claim of having found foreign nationals in Bihar.
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As the month-long first phase of the SIR has concluded, the EC on Sunday (July 27, 2025) said that enumeration forms from 7.24 crore or 91.69% of voters of the State have been received.
It also said 36 lakh people were found to have either permanently shifted from their previous addresses or were not found. It pointed out that seven lakh Bihar voters were found to have enrolled themselves at multiple places.
"ECI has deleted 1.26 crore voters in Bihar from the 2024 Lok Sabha voter list overnight," Mr. Gokhale, the TMC Rajya Sabha MP, said on X.
Calling the details revealed by the EC "bizarre", Mr. Gokhale pointed out that of a total of 7.90 crore voters, forms have been collected from only 91.69% — 7.24 crore voters.
"This means that forms were not collected from 65 lakh voters and they will be deleted. About 22 lakh voters (2.83%) have been deleted because they're claimed to be deceased, about 36 lakh voters (4.59%) have been deleted because they're claimed to be untraceable, and about 7 lakh voters (0.89%) claimed to be found as duplicate entries so half i.e. 3.5 lakh entries deleted," he said.
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"ECI has conveniently not disclosed how many voters were found to be non-citizens of India. This is important because ECI had claimed that the SIR was being done to 'remove illegal immigrants'," Mr. Gokhale said.
EC sources had earlier said their field-level functionaries found "a large number of people" from Nepal, Bangladesh and Myanmar during house-to-house visits made for the ongoing intensive review of the voters' list in Bihar. Mr. Gokhale further said the names "deleted" were on the voters' list in the last Lok Sabha polls.
"A total of 1.26 crore voters in Bihar, whose names were on the Lok Sabha 2024 voter list just one year ago, have been deleted from the new voter list," he said.
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"To give you a comparable idea, the number of deleted voters in Bihar during the current SIR is equal to the entire combined population of Uttarakhand plus Himachal Pradesh or the entire combined population of all six States of the North-East (excluding Assam)," he said. He said EC needed to answer some questions "urgently".
"The voter list was revised by the ECI before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. How on earth did 1.26 crore voters become ineligible in just one year?" he said.
"How many voters has the ECI been unable to reach for collecting their forms? Under the rules of SIR, those whose forms were not collected will be deleted. Therefore, what is the total number of voters whose names have been deleted only because their forms were not collected?" he questioned. He said the EC has not collected documents along with the forms from all 7.24 crore voters.
"Does this mean that more voters will be deleted if their documents have not been collected with their forms?" He reiterated West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's statement that the SIR exercise "is NRC by the back door."
"ECI had claimed 'removing foreigners from the voter list' as one of the reasons for conducting this SIR. Why has the ECI not disclosed how many actual 'foreigners' were found and deleted from the voter list during this SIR?" he said.
"It makes zero sense that 12 million people in Bihar have become 'ineligible' voters in just one year between the 2024 Lok Sabha elections till date... When 12 million people in a single State lose the right to vote overnight, it is a serious issue," he said. He added that the Opposition MPs have been pressing for a debate on the issue.
"Why is the Modi Government so scared to have an open discussion on this in Parliament?" he added. Meanwhile, the EC has asserted that no names will be deleted from draft rolls without following due process.