Bihar Voter List Revision Could Cut 23,000 Per Constituency Before Election

Fifty-six lakh people across Bihar will be removed from the voter list after the Election Commission's 'special intensive revision', the poll panel said Wednesday evening.

The list of 'unverified' voters include 20 lakh dead people, 28 lakh whose primary residence is now in another state (making them ineligible to voter in Bihar), and seven lakh registered in more than one place. An additional one lakh people on the curent list cannot be contacted.

Meanwhile, a further 15 lakh voters did not return verification forms, meaning they too are likley to find themselves struck off the roll when voting begins later this year.

On Tuesday the poll panel said around 52 lakh entries had been deleted, and last week that a number of registered 'voters' were from foreign countries. Meanwhile,

The re-verification of voters - a regular and constitutionally mandated exercise - has run into problems in Bihar because of the proximity of the exercise to the Assembly election.

The opposition has criticised the timing and alleged it was orchestrated to eat into its voter base.

The reference was to voters from poorer and marginalised sections, who may struggle to gather thedocuments - not including even the EC's own ID card - needed to re-verify themselves.

NDTV Explains | Row Over 'Special Intensive Revision' Of Bihar Voter List

Challenges to the exercise were filed in the Supreme Court. The matter is being heard and the court allowed the revision to continue for now, but it did also ask questions about the timing.

READ | Aadhaar, Voter ID Not Okay For Bihar Revision: Poll Body Tells Top Court

The court also directed the EC to ensure the process is completed, including hearing and settling of appeals by people removed from the list, before the election.

The EC has said the final list will be published September 30.

What This Means For Bihar Election

The state has 243 constituencies. Deletion of 56 lakh names from the voter list means an average of 23,045 voters per constituency will not be allowed to vote.

The opposition has said that even a one per cent purge of names on the existing list of voters - a list used for the past 10 major elections in the state - would be unacceptable. For context, a one per cent exclusion is around 7.9 lakh voters or about 3,251 voters per constituency.

In the 2020 election the opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal lost 52 seats by margins of 5,000 or fewer votes and 40 by margins of 3,500 or fewer.

The RJD won 75 seats - the most by any one party - but still fell short of the halfway mark of 123 after its ally, the Congress, flopped. Combined, the RJD-led alliance won 110 seats.

READ | "You Were A Child...": Nitish Kumar vs Tejashwi Yadav In Bihar Assembly

The political slugfest between the opposition RJD-Congress and the ruling BJP-JDU played out ferociously in the Bihar Assembly this afternoon, with the RJD's Tejaswhi Yadav and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar of the JDU leading their parties' charge.

READ | "Bihar Voter Revision Imposed": Nitish Kumar MP's 'Personal Opinion'

There was also a big twist after a MP from Nitish Kumar's party, Girdhari Yadav, offered his 'personal opinion' - that the Election Commission had "forcefully imposed" the voter list revision.

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