A Field Survey by Congress in Begusarai Shows All That is Wrong With Bihar SIR

New Delhi: A field survey by the Congress in Begusarai has pointed out several problems with the way voters have been excluded from the first draft of electoral rolls in the special intensive revision (SIR) exercise being conducted by the Election Commission (EC) in Bihar – which in all likelihood could be part of a pattern across the state.

The party conducted the survey over the last fortnight in 19 polling booths across three assembly constituencies in Begusarai: Teghra, Matihani and Begusarai. It found a large number of wrongful deletions in all 19 booths and the district administration barely equipped to correct its mistakes that led to such exclusions of legitimate voters.

The Congress’s district committee president Abhay Kumar Singh wrote a letter to Begusarai’s district magistrate Tushar Singla – also the district electoral officer – on Monday (August 11), pointing out the defects that the party found in its field survey.

The INDIA bloc constituents in the state, comprising the Rashtriya Janata Dal, Left parties and the Congress, then presented the letter to Singla. They later claimed that they found his assurances on how corrections could be done to ensure smooth polling in the assembly election that is due in a couple of months rather unconvincing.

The letter points to a multi-layered pattern of problems.

Congress's letter to Begusarai's DM/DEO by The Wire

One, the process of the verification of deleted voters, the Congress pointed out, has become extremely difficult as the draft electoral rolls published online by the EC on August 1 don’t provide the names of those who have been deleted from the previous electoral rolls that existed on June 24, 2025, the day when the SIR started.

Two, the process of verification becomes even more difficult as the EC hasn’t published the list of deleted voters online.

The EC has said that around 65 lakh names have been deleted from the previous electoral rolls, but hasn’t made them available online. It has given hard copies of the deleted names to political parties in a move that it claims will “ease verification”, but all verifiers will have to sift through the draft SIR electoral rolls and the previous electoral rolls, both of which contain lakhs of names, to properly identify and cross-check the veracity of deletions.

The “ease of verification” that the EC claims to have facilitated for political parties would have actually been easier if the commission had marked the deletions from the previous electoral rolls instead of creating separate draft SIR rolls that don’t contain a list of deleted names.

Moreover, the Congress pointed out that the hard copies of the list of deleted voters that it has received do not provide the “EPIC [electoral photo ID card] numbers and residential addresses” of those excluded, making the process of identification even more painful.

Three, the Congress has said that the “cause of deletion is only mentioned as “Enumeration form is not submitted” on the top of each page, but the specific cause of deletion, i.e. whether the deleted electors are deceased, permanently shifted, untraceable or have multiple enrolments, have not been mentioned. Because of such a defective format, it is very difficult for political parties to verify the deleted names.”

It further said, “There is no transparency regarding the grounds for such negative recommendation by the BLOs [booth-level officers]. Unless this data of “not recommended” enumeration forms are made available transparently, a large number of electors would get excluded eventually without even knowing and/or understanding the ground for their exclusions.”

Four, the EC started the SIR in around 77,000 polling booths but ended up creating new booths in the process, taking the total number to around 90,000. However, instead of numbering the new booths separately, the EC gave new numbers to all 90,000 booths.

What this entailed was that the old booth numbers through which voters identified their own polling stations have been marked with new numbering.

The Congress said this has made the process of verification extremely cumbersome. The hard copies of the list of deleted voters contain the old booth numbers. Since the document is not machine-readable, one will have to go through an additional layer of organising the old booth numbers against the new ones to start the verification process.

Additionally, BLOs have been reassigned according to the new numbering of booths, which has led to a greater lack of coordination, the Congress claims.

For instance, the existing BLO of a booth was tasked by the EC with providing enumeration forms to voters and collecting address and citizenship documents. But after the reordering of polling booths, the same BLO was reassigned to a different booth, and a new BLO with no memory of the first stage of work in the SIR for this booth had to procure the completed enumeration forms and recommend deletions.

“BLOs of newly created Parts/Booths have complained that much confusion has been created bу this modification of existing booths during the SIR process, because they have to procure the enumeration forms and documents collected by the BLOs of older Parts/Booths. Such confusion [among] the BLOs has made the process of verification of deleted electors even more difficult,” the Congress’s letter said.

Five – the most important part of the Congress's complaint – is wrongful deletions.

The party’s survey found multiple anomalies. For example, in one booth (old number 274, new number 237) in the Teghra assembly constituency, its survey found eight names who are genuine electors with valid EPIC numbers but have been deleted from the draft rolls. In another instance at the same booth, it found 37 names in the new electoral list who have already died.

“These names which were to be deleted through SIR have been retained, while many genuine electors who are alive have been deleted,” the letter said.

Six, the surveyors found that the district administration was asking everyone complaining against his/her wrongful deletion to fill up Form 6, which is meant to enroll new voters.

When the INDIA bloc team met Begusarai's district magistrate, he insisted on correcting the discrepancies through only Form 6, despite existing remedies available in Forms 7 and 8.

Form 7 addresses ‘claims and objections’ and allows people to object to someone's inclusion in the electoral rolls or seek someone's (including their own) deletion from them. Form 8 allows the EC to make corrections to names, addresses and EPIC transfers.

But the EC's insistence on resolving disputes in the draft electoral rolls through Form 6, the Congress suspects, will allow the poll body to claim negligible mistakes in the SIR exercise, given the fact that those appealing against their exclusion will be included in the new rolls as new voters only.

Economist and activist Prasenjit Bose, who helped the Congress district unit organise the survey, told The Wire: “The EC’s insistence on excluded electors filling Form 6 to get re-enrolled clearly shows that it is concealing its errors. The EC is deliberately discouraging the use of Form 7 and Form 8 [to address anomalies]. That is how it is able to claim that complaints against wrongful exclusions are nearly zero.”

Bose said that this will have several implications. “By insisting on using Form 6 as the only redressal mechanism, the EC will be creating an unnecessarily high number of new EPICs. A majority of the excluded being poor and barely educated, they will have to run from pillar to post to get their hands on the new EPIC cards, which will only be sent later by post. This will create so much hassle for them for no fault of theirs.”

“The EC must give up this insistence on Form 6 and allow those seeking re-enrolment to retain their original EPICs. Sending new EPIC cards by post to lakhs of new electors before the assembly election will add to the logistical challenge,” Bose said.

Demands

In light of these findings, the Congress has therefore demanded that a new booth-wise list of deletions mentioning the “cause of deletion and EPIC numbers against each of the deleted voters” should be made available to all. It also said that the list should be made available online “in a searchable format”.

It further asked the EC to task the BLOs of all booths to explain the cause of each deletion, and demanded that errors made by BLOs and other EC officials be corrected through Form 8, not through Form 6.

It finally demanded that the deadline for corrections in the draft electoral rolls should be extended by 30 days to September 30, and that the publication of the final electoral rolls should be postponed accordingly.

Read The Wire's full coverage of the Bihar SIR here.

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