Special revision must to weed out ineligible voters: EC officials

New Delhi: The Election Commission officials on Monday defended the move to conduct a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar, saying many "non-eligible persons " have been able to procure voter cards as the ongoing exercise was not held periodically since 2004.

They also said that "many persons" have, knowingly or unknowingly, managed to retain multiple voter cards of different constituencies and it is impossible to detect such cases through software tools.

Referring to "non-eligible persons", the officials pointed out that eligibility documents too are not readily available. Therefore, in case of complaints and objections by any elector or political party, it becomes difficult to enquire into such complaints in a rational manner.

Many persons are ordinary residents of one place and have got their voter card there, but they have somehow been successful in retaining their earlier card before migration which is a criminal offence.

Opposition parties have maintained that the exercise could deprive genuine voters of their right to benefit the ruling dispensation in Bihar.

The electoral rolls were prepared afresh through various intensive revisions either across the country or in parts, nine times in the 52 years period from 1952 to 2004. i.e. once nearly every six years on an average.

However, intensive revision has not been done in the last 22 years.

The Election Commission will carry out an intensive review of electoral rolls this year in six states beginning with Bihar to weed out foreign illegal migrants by checking their place of birth.

Bihar is going to polls later this year while the assembly polls in five states -- Assam, Kerala, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal -- are scheduled in 2026.

The move, which would be later expanded to other states, assumes significance in the wake of a crackdown in various states on illegal foreign migrants, including from Bangladesh and Myanmar.

The Election Commission officials said although the poll authority has addressed the issue of duplicate voter cards numbers -- same card numbers erroneously issued to two different persons -- the issue of many persons enrolling in different places by giving different unmatching details to procure more than one electoral photo identity card can only be resolved through SIR.

It is practically impossible to detect such cases through software tools.

In some constituencies, they pointed out, that the number of migrants has become more than the victory margins which can affect democratic integrity.

As per the 2011 census, there were 454 million migrants in India up from 315 million in 2001. Even as per Migration in India Report 2021, the percentage of migrants in the population was estimated at around 29 per cent, which on an average is more than the winning margin in many of the constituencies, the officials underlined.

The photographs of voters in EPIC are also so old that matching the photographs and eliminating same voters with different EPICs through use of technology is hardly reliable. Thus, new photographs of electors will help in identifying such cases, they said.

The officials said the current level of technology enables collection of eligibility documents once for all.

This repository will enable enquiry into any specific complaint against any elector any time based on available documents rather than depending on just unverifiable oral submissions made to Booth Level Officers, they said.