Electoral Systems
The Election Commission’s special intensive revision of the electoral rolls of Bihar has cost Katihar daily wage labourer Phool Kumari Devi two days’ worth of earnings and five kilograms of rice.
“The BLO (Booth Level officer) had asked me for my Aadhaar card and voter ID card, and a passport size photo. I had no photo so I had to travel four kilometres to a photo studio. I had no money, so I had to sell rice I had got through the public distribution system. This meant that I had to stay without food,” said Phool Kumari Devi.
She said this at a public hearing organised in Patna on July 21 by several organisations including the Bharat Jodo Abhiyan, Jan Jagran Shakti Sangathan, National Alliance of People’s Movement, Swaraj Abhiyan and Kosi Navnirman Manch.
Many people complained that they were asked for money to get their forms filled. Kanchan Devi is one of them.
The team from the Bharat Jodo Abhiyan released the outcome of a rapid survey conducted in eight districts in the first week of July.
For this, 709 people of 12 assembly segments were interviewed.
According to the survey report, voters of the 18-40 age group, who were not on the 2003 electoral rolls – an overwhelming majority of 63% – did not possess any of the 11 documents to qualify for eligibility. Most have Aadhaar and voter ID cards.
22/07/2025
In an interview to The Wire, Rawat who served as CEC from January 23 to December 1, 2018, said that while the exercise being conducted by the poll body will help in identifying illegal immigrants, an intensive revision was not necessary for this purpose.
“For identifying illegal immigrants and purifying electoral rolls of these illegal immigrants, the law provides a very easy solution,” said Rawat.
18/07/2025
According to Rule 25(1) of The Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, electoral rolls can be revised “either intensively or summarily or partly intensively and partly summarily, as the Election Commission may direct.” The Election Commission’s own website lists frequently asked questions or FAQs relating to the updating of electoral rolls and has a fourth category – ‘Special Summary Revision.’
The Representation of the People Act, 1950 empowers the Election Commission to revise electoral rolls and conduct ‘special revisions’. The term Special Intensive Revision – now being used by the Election Commission in its Bihar exercise does not find mention in either.
The Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 which provides under Rule 25 the statutory rules for revision of electoral rolls, lists three types of revision – intensive or summary or partly intensively and partly summarily. But does not mention ‘Special Intensive Revision’ as the one being conducted in Bihar.
18/07/2025
Election Commission of India’s (ECI’s) June 24 order to conduct a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar is outrageous. The exercise’s timing – to be completed in a period of one month, that too four months ahead of elections for the state assembly – has raised serious doubts about ECI’s neutral functioning. Furthermore, the order for completing the near-impossible task of covering eight crore voters was implemented a day after the order was issued.
The order says that those not included in the 2003 electoral roll would have to provide documentary proof which, inter alia, includes that they and their parents are citizens of India. Those unable to submit such evidence and other documents listed by the ECI could be referred to the Citizens’ Tribunal as suspected foreign nationals.
In the face of public outcry and against the exercise, the ECI is sending conflicting messages. The Electoral Officer of Bihar in a newspaper ad appealed that eligible voters should fill up the forms distributed to them and submit the required documents later. In contrast, CEC Gyanesh Kumar on June 6 said that SIR was being conducted without any change in instructions. Such contradictory signals seem suspicious, especially when the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear several petitions against the SIR on July 10.
by S N Sahu
09/07/2025
According LiveLaw, a bench of Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia and Justice Joymalya Bagchi heard the submission that voters who fail to submit the forms with the specified documents will face the harsh consequence of being deleted from the electoral roll, even if they have voted in elections for the last 20 years. This, they submitted, will lead to four crores out of eight crores thus exposed.
Supreme Court Agrees to Urgently List Petitions Challenging EC's Bihar Rolls Revision - The Wire
The lawyers added that the ECI’s decision to not accept Aadhaar or voter ID cards made it an ‘impossible’ task to be completed within a very strict timeline.
A day ago, former election commissioner Ashok Lavasa had written in a column that the timing of the announcement “amid the hysteria of citizenship checks, especially at state and municipal levels in some states, where ‘purification’ was equally important and was used for voter deletion, raises questions about the intent of the EC in the face of the huge population thus affected.”
Lavasa asked why the ECI was attaching value to the cut-off date of 2003, when the last roll revisions took place in Bihar.
07/07/2025
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