Bihar SIR raises more questions than answers, over 5 lakh duplicate voters in final electoral roll: Cong

New Delhi, Oct 8 (PTI) Raising several questions over the SIR of electoral rolls in Bihar, the Congress on Wednesday asked why the Election Commission has not made the final list of all deleted voters available and claimed that there are more than five lakh duplicate voters in the final voter list.

The Congress' Empowered Action Group of Leaders and Experts (EAGLE), formed to monitor the conduct of free and fair elections by the Election Commission of India (ECI), said the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) raises more questions than answers.

The ECI undertook SIR in Bihar and released a final list of 7.42 crore registered voters for the upcoming state elections, it said.

"Despite several pleas by the Congress party, the ECI has not made available a machine-readable voter list which makes any analysis of the voter list very cumbersome. Further, the ECI did not make the voter list available as one consolidated list but released it as 90,000 separate individual files in image format," the Congress' panel said in a statement.

Why is the ECI so hesitant to make voter lists easy to analyse, the panel asked. "What is it scared of?" it said.

After a preliminary analysis of the Bihar voter list, the Congress party has the questions for the ECI, it said.

For the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, there were 7.72 crore registered voters, which means, on a net basis, 30 lakh people of Bihar who were registered as voters for the parliamentary elections are no longer voters for the assembly election, the Congress' EAGLE group said.

"Who are these 30 lakh people? How many of these people voted in Bihar for the Lok Sabha 2024 elections," it asked.

"ECI claims 21.53 lakh voters were added in Bihar, but Form 6 is available for only 16.93 lakh. Where are the remaining 4.6 lakh forms? Were these voters added without due process?" the Congress panel said.

In total, 67.3 lakh voters have been deleted in the SIR exercise and more than one-tenth of these deletions are in just 15 assembly constituencies, it claimed.

Why has the EC not made available the final list of all deleted voters and their details by booth and category, the panel asked.

"As per our analysis, there are more than five lakh duplicate (same name, relative name, age, gender and address) voters in the final list published. What was the point of SIR if there are still more than five lakh duplicates? How will ECI verify and clean these now?" the EAGLE group said.

The chief election commissioner has allowed applications for inclusion up to 10 days before the last date of nomination, the final electoral roll must be frozen on that date, it said.

Any supplementary or additional lists published later should not be permitted to alter the voter base, the panel said, adding that the elections must be held strictly on the list finalized on the last date of nomination.

Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi has been consistently pointing out irregularities in the voter list and how it has been used to manipulate electoral outcomes, the panel pointed out.

The Congress welcomes all efforts to clean voter lists and make them transparent, it said.

Answering the above questions will be an important step by the ECI to gaining the confidence of the public about the integrity of voter lists, the EAGLE group said.

The panel has Congress leaders Ajay Maken, Digvijaya Singh, Praveen Chakravarty, Pawan Khera, Nitin Raut and Gurdeep Singh Sappal as its members.

The Congress on Tuesday said much was made of the need of the SIR exercise to remove non-citizens from the electoral roll but the ECI has not had the integrity or the courage to enlighten the country on how many such non-citizens in Bihar were removed from the voter list.

The opposition party had also said if the poll body had informed as to how many such non-citizens in Bihar were removed from the electoral roll, it would have been even more exposed than it already is.

The EC's SIR exercise in Bihar has drawn sharp protests from the Opposition, which has accused the poll body of working at the behest of the ruling BJP, a charge it has flatly rejected.

The Commission has asserted that it will not allow any eligible citizen to be left out of the voters' list and at the same time, not let any ineligible person be on the list.

Bihar will go to polls in two phases on November 6 and 11 and votes will be counted on November 14 to decide the fate of the ruling NDA government led by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and the challenge posed by the opposition bloc comprising the RJD and Congress among others. PTI ASK KVK KVK