Voter List Revisions & the Disenfranchisement Controversy in Bihar

Bihar’s Voter List Purge: How the Election Commission’s Roll Revision Sparked a Fierce Battle Over Democracy, Documents, and Disenfranchisement

The Election Commission of India (ECI) launched a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of Bihar’s electoral rolls on June 24. The objective given was to purge the rolls of deceased, duplicate, and migrated electors before the high-stakes assembly election. Voters were required to complete new enumeration forms, while non-pre-2003 roll voters had to furnish documents from a limited range of 11. 
Surprisingly, everyday documents such as Aadhaar, ration cards, and voter ID cards were unacceptable.

The timeline was fast: forms received till July 25, draft roll brought out on August 1, claims and objections by September 1, and final roll available by September 30. Towards the end of July, the EC claimed impressive figures: 20 lakh dead voters struck off, 28 lakh permanently migrated persons deleted, 7 lakh duplicates consolidated, and approximately 15 lakh forms unrecovered.

Who Stands to Lose Votes?

Opposition parties quickly raised an alarm, accusing the exercise of being less a process of cleansing and more of mass disenfranchisement. CPI(ML) denounced it as the ‘biggest attack’ on the Constitution, referring to a staggering number, 66 lakh deletions in one month alone. 

RJD and Congress leaders cautioned that people experiencing poverty, the migrants, women, and minorities, the least likely to possess the prescribed documents, were most vulnerable to the loss of their votes. 

Civil society organizations like the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) also voiced similar sentiments, arguing that while Aadhaar and EPIC cards have their restrictions, they are more commonly held and should be accepted to avoid arbitrary exclusion.

What did the Supreme Court Say?

Petitions soon reached the Supreme Court, which fell short of preventing the revision but put checks in place. On August 14, it instructed the ECI to:

Publish booth-wise rolls of 65 lakh voters who have been deleted, along with the reasons for deletion.

Accept Aadhaar and EPIC cards while processing claims.

Publicize the deletions booth-wise so that the voters can raise objections against them.

The court has again stated that Aadhaar is not a document of citizenship, but accepted that denying its use entirely was an unnecessary hurdle. The next hearing is scheduled for August 22, keeping the matter very much alive in the courts.

How is EC Defending Its Action?

Top Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar has consistently rejected the allegations of politically motivated misinformation. He maintains that the Commission is only carrying out its constitutional obligation under Article 326 to conduct free and fair elections. 

He made clear that those already enrolled in the 2003 roll do not require new documents, and special arrangements have been made for the elderly, disabled, and socially disadvantaged.

For the EC, the reasoning is straightforward: inflated rolls facilitate false voting and reduce credibility. But its timing, at a few months to the polls, and singling out readily available IDs have left it under a cloud.

Why is Political Temperature Heating Up?

The INDIA bloc has caught on to the controversy, presenting it as ‘voter chori’ (vote theft) by the BJP in tandem with the EC. Rahul Gandhi and CPI(ML)’s Dipankar Bhattacharya have organized protests throughout Bihar, while calls for bandhs and marches to EC offices have dominated headlines. The BJP, meanwhile, maintains the cleanup is long overdue and necessary.

For ordinary people of Bihar numbering millions, the row means worried trips to locality booths to verify if their names still exist. Fear of being removed from the rolls without any clue is real in the flood-afflicted constituencies of Seemanchal and north Bihar, where the coverage is irregular.

What is In Store?

The next few weeks will determine whether the revision will be remembered as a necessary cleanup or as an exercise in exclusion. Everything will depend on how transparently the EC implements the court’s orders and how well voters can recover their names during the claims window.

For Bihar, one of India’s poorest and most migration-prone states, the episode has brought to the fore older issues: Who is a voter? How inclusive can democracy be when documentation is itself an entitlement?

With the election approaching, the SIR is now more than a bureaucratic formality; it is a political artifact that could influence both the turnout and the legitimacy of the 2025 Bihar election.