'Attempt to Make Bihar Workers Vote Here?': Row as EC Includes Bihar SIR Extract Among ID Proofs

Chennai: The Election Commission of India’s (ECI) decision to include an “Extract of the electoral roll of Bihar SIR with reference to July 1, 2025” among 13 documents accepted as proof of identity during the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls has triggered political unease in Tamil Nadu. The move, applicable to nine states and three Union Territories, has prompted the ruling DMK to formally seek clarification from the poll body.

In a letter to Tamil Nadu chief electoral officer Archana Patnaik on Wednesday, the DMK questioned the rationale behind including a Bihar-related document in the verification process for Tamil Nadu voters. The party asked whether the “Bihar SIR extract” would be treated as a basic document to register voters from Bihar in Tamil Nadu without satisfying the legal condition of “ordinary residence.”

“What the electoral roll of Bihar has to do with the SIR to be conducted in Tamil Nadu has not been clarified,” the party asked in its representation, as per a report published in The New Indian Express.

The Naam Tamilar Katchi (NTK) alleged that the move confirms its fears of attempts to include migrant workers from northern states in Tamil Nadu’s voter rolls.

DMK’s legal wing secretary and Rajya Sabha MP N.R. Elango demanded that the ECI withdraw the document since "within four or five months, how can the same person be an elector on the Tamil Nadu electoral rolls".

“In Tamil Nadu, if you are a voter in 2002, there is no need for any identification document during the SIR. Your children also require no document. All others should produce any of the 13 identification documents to add them to the electoral rolls. There is no problem with the identification documents from 1 to 12.

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But document 13 is a document related to a person’s identity as a voter in Bihar on the ground that the person is an ordinary resident of Bihar as on July 1, 2025. Within four or five months, how can the same person be an elector on the Tamil Nadu electoral rolls?” Elango was quoted as saying by TNIE.

Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK) general secretary and MP D. Ravikumar recalled that during earlier revisions, the ECI had attributed a large number of deletions in Bihar’s voter lists to migration to Tamil Nadu. “Now, adding the Bihar SIR extract as an identification document raises a suspicion as to whether this is an attempt to make Bihar workers as voters here,” he alleged.

Officials from the state elections department, however, downplayed the controversy. A senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told TNIE that the document was added merely as one among 13 options for identity verification. The official clarified that this is relevant only if a person originally from Bihar, where the SIR process is already completed, seeks inclusion in Tamil Nadu’s electoral roll as an ordinary resident. The inclusion, the official underlined, does not mean that all Bihar natives living in Tamil Nadu will be automatically added to the state’s voter list.

Further, the official mentioned that "document 13" was not specific to Tamil Nadu but applied uniformly across all nine states and three Union Territories undergoing the special revision.

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