EC reports no political party has submitted requests to alter Bihar’s draft voter list during the first 11 days of August.
Opposition MPs protested the SIR process, alleging voter suppression, but were detained by police en route to the EC office.
EC says revision is necessary to remove non-eligible voters and prevent multiple registrations.
The Election Commission on Monday said that no political party has approached it between August 1 and August 11 with requests for inclusion or removal of names from Bihar’s draft electoral roll.
According to PTI, the draft roll remains open for claims and objections until September 1. According to the EC, 10,570 forms have been received from individual electors seeking inclusion of names in the list.
Earlier in the day, opposition MPs, including Leaders of Opposition Rahul Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge, staged a protest march from Parliament House to the EC headquarters against the special intensive revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls in Bihar. They alleged “vote chori” and claimed the process aimed at disenfranchising voters ahead of the upcoming assembly elections. Police stopped the march midway and detained the leaders.
EC officials have defended the revision, saying many non-eligible persons had obtained voter cards as the SIR had not been conducted regularly since 2004, and that some individuals were holding multiple voter cards in different constituencies, as reported by PTI.
The controversy stems from opposition allegations that the EC’s SIR exercise has led to the deletion of 65,00,000 votes. Parties in the INDIA Bloc alliance say that the numbers are skewed disproportionately towards the marginalised and minority communities. The EC has defended saying that the exercise would clear up any inaccuracies, with the Chief Election Officer asking, “Should the dead and migrated be allowed to vote?”. The exercise became a flashpoint in Parliament, with four consecutive days of disruption, slogans in the Well of the House, and allegations of voter suppression across sessions.
Bihar’s assembly election is expected to be contested between the NDA bloc and the INDIA alliance before the end of the year.
