The Bihar Special Intensive Revision (SIR) has propelled India’s electoral machinery into the spotlight all over again. Officially, the exercise is meant to clean up the voter rolls, ensuring that every vote is verified. In practice, it has sparked anxiety—nearly 65 lakh voters might end up excluded for lack of documentation. The exercise is being painted by the Opposition, led in Bihar by the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and its ally, the Congress, as a form of corruption—vote chori. It cannot but remind one of the “chowkidar chor hai” campaign launched by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in his 2019 election campaign. But that had fizzled out—or at least not granted Gandhi’s party the victory he had hoped for by riding on an issue as emotive as corruption in defence deals.