On Bihar Election Trail, Shah Brings Up ‘Illegal Immigrants’ on Rolls, But EC Provided No Figures

New Delhi: While the Election Commission has provided no figures for the number of foreigners found on the electoral rolls in Bihar following the contentious  contentious special intensive revision (SIR) of the voter rolls in the state, the presence of these alleged “illegal immigrants” has emerged as a major theme for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in its Bihar election campaign.

Union home minister Amit Shah in successive election rallies has raised the issue of alleged “illegal immigrants” on Bihar's electoral rolls and even termed the opposition Congress-Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD)'s ‘Voter Adhikar Yatra’ in the aftermath of the SIR as a “Ghuspaithiya Bachao Yatra”.

Shah has also claimed that the SIR resulted in the deletions of only those voters who were not Indian citizens.

The Election Commission, however, has not only provided no figures for any such foreigners found at the end of the SIR exercise, it has not even disclosed the reasons for deletion of about 47 lakh voters who were left out of the final electoral rolls published on September 30.

Addressing a rally in Nalanda on Thursday (October 30), Shah said that leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi took out a ‘Ghuspaithiya Bachao Yatra', and asked the crowd if such “illegal immigrants should be taken out of Bihar's voter lists or not”.

“Rahul Gandhi was here [in Bihar]. Three months ago he took out a ‘Ghuspaithiya Bachao Yatra'. People of Nalanda, tell me, should illegal immigrants be taken out of Bihar's voter lists or not?” Shah asked the crowd.

He then accused Gandhi and RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav of “protecting illegal immigrants” and promised that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will “pick and take out every illegal immigrant and send them back to where they have come from”.

“Lalu ji and Rahul want to protect them. But I want to say from the land of Gautam Buddha, Nalanda, that you elect an NDA government, and we will pick and take out every single illegal immigrant from Bihar. Rahul does not know that these illegal immigrants take up our youth's jobs, our poor's food and work against the nation.

“You can take any number of ‘Ghuspaithiya Bachao Yatras’. Narendra Modi is the country's prime minister; we will take out every illegal immigrant and send them back to where they have come from,” he said.

On Wednesday too, Shah while addressing a rally in Begusarai asked if Bangladeshis should be allowed to be a part of Bihar's electoral rolls.

“Both Lalu and Rahul are protectors of Bangladeshi infiltrators. But today I am leaving with a promise to you that if you elect all of our candidates, the BJP will do the work of selecting and removing every infiltrator from the land of Bihar,” he said.

While the Election Commission had on June 24 said that one of the reasons for the conduct of the SIR so close to the elections was the presence of foreigners on the voter rolls, the poll body has not yet provided any figures of the number of such foreigners found at the end of the exercise, following which Bihar's electorate has shrunk by about 6%.

The poll body has not even provided the reasons for the deletions of 47 lakh voters from the rolls.

However, in an interview with television news channel News18 on Wednesday evening, Shah said that the SIR had only resulted in the deletion of those voters who were not Indian citizens.

“Names of many people have been deleted. These names were deleted because they could not prove they are Indian citizens. If they were Indian citizens, they would have provided proof. You or I don't have a problem. We can give the papers. But of those votes deleted, only three appeals have been made against the deletions. If there was any injustice, then there would be appeals. This means those who were deleted were not Indian citizens and only their names have been deleted,” he said.

Through the time that the SIR was being conducted, the Election Commission had provided daily press releases in which it listed voters who were found to be dead, to have shifted or to have been registered in more than one place.

Its draft electoral roll published on August 1, which included 65 lakh deletions, also provided this breakup and said that 22 lakh voters were declared deceased, 36 lakh had permanently shifted or were not found, and seven lakh had duplicate entries in multiple places.

The final electoral roll published on September 30 provides no such breakup.

The Election Commission's statement on September 30 only states that the number of “ineligible electors removed from draft list” was 3.66 lakh, while 21.53 lakh “eligible electors [were] added in draft list (Form 6)”.

At a press conference in Patna, on October 5, days after the SIR concluded, Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar did not provide any details about the number of foreign “illegal immigrants” found in the rolls or the reasons for the deletion of 47 lakh voters.

“The names deleted from the electoral rolls include those who have died, those who are not Indian citizens, those who are registered in multiple places and those who have shifted permanently. The responsibility to create the electoral roll is of the ERO [electoral registration officer]. So every ERO and every district magistrate has this data,” he said.

Earlier this week, when the Election Commission announced the commencement of the nationwide SIR with 12 states and Union territories, Kumar once again did not provide any details of how many foreigners were found in Bihar or what action was taken against them.

Instead, he said that the poll body's move to demand proof of an elector's or their parents' presence on the 2002-04 rolls was to guard against the wrongful inclusion of foreigners.

“Many times, if any individual who is not an Indian citizen and who has got some papers made, you would have noticed, that in the enumeration phase we will match whether in 2002, 2003 or 2004, either you or your senior relatives were on the electoral rolls or not. If there is a match, then the matter ends there. Those who do not match, they will be issued a notice, after this they will have to show their papers and say where they were in 2003. Doing this is very necessary,” said Kumar.

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