The parties’ official agents are silent within the ECI’s process, yet the parties themselves are loud outside of it.

Data from India’s Election Commission reveals a paradox in the current revision of Bihar’s voter rolls. While 43,123 people have applied to be added as voters, no political party has filed a single official objection for the nearly 65 lakh citizens whose names have been flagged for deletion, according to an August 9 bulletin.

This suggests the burden of avoiding disenfranchisement now falls on individuals, not political parties. The situation unfolds as opposition parties protest fiercely, arguing the revision is designed to remove vulnerable people and their own supporters from the voter lists just months before a critical state election.

The parties’ official agents are silent within the ECI’s process, yet the parties themselves are loud outside of it. The INDIA opposition bloc calls the revision “vote theft,” is demanding a debate in parliament, and has planned a protest march to the ECI on August 11. 

The matter has also moved to the courts. Following a petition by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), the Supreme Court has ordered the ECI to file a response to the complaints by August 9 and will hear the case on August 12.

The controversy grew after the ECI’s door-to-door survey ended on July 25. The commission called the drive a success while revealing that 64 lakh electors had been flagged. It then released a draft roll on August 1 showing 65 lakh names dropped, claiming 22 lakh were deceased, 36 lakh had permanently moved or could not be found, and 7 lakh were duplicates.

But civil society groups argue these numbers cannot be verified. The ADR has formally demanded that the ECI release a detailed, assembly-wise list of all 65 lakh deleted voters, broken down by the reason for deletion. In its court filings, the ADR argued that the current draft roll, which lacks this detail, “serves no purpose” and cannot be used to cross-check the ECI’s claims.

The organisation believes the ECI is concealing the reasons for each deletion to prevent public scrutiny. “ECI’s concealment…seems to be an attempt to obviate the general public…from ascertaining whether or not electors whose names figure in the said list are indeed dead or permanently migrated,” the ADR’s application stated.

Crucially, ADR noted that those removed from the draft roll lose their right to standard legal remedies like a notice and a hearing. This, they argue, puts them at the highest risk of disenfranchisement. The group has also used the RTI Act to ask for the documents the ECI relied on to justify the deletions and for proof that any notices were sent to affected voters.

The 65 lakh people at risk of deletion are only part of the problem. The other is exclusion. The new draft roll has 56 lakh fewer voters than the one published in January – 7.24 crore, down from 7.80 crore.

This gap exists because the ECI failed to add new voters, especially the 20.6 lakh young people who will be 18 by the election. So far, only 43,123 have applied. This failure has dropped Bihar’s elector-to-population ratio from 97% to a low of 88%, leaving 94 lakh eligible citizens off the voter roll.