As the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls in Bihar progresses, it has come to light that a significant number of individuals from Nepal, Bangladesh, and Myanmar have been listed in the voter rolls.
According to sources within the Election Commission of India (ECI), Booth Level Officers (BLOs), during their door-to-door verification process, identified a large number of people from these three countries.
The sources further stated that the names of these individuals will not be included in the final electoral roll, which is scheduled for publication on September 30, 2025, pending a detailed inquiry set to begin after August 1, 2025.
An official confirmation from the ECI on the matter is still awaited.
The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Bihar is an ECI-led initiative aimed at updating and correcting the state’s voter list. This process involves house-to-house verification to ensure the accuracy and integrity of the electoral rolls ahead of the upcoming Assembly elections.
Till Saturday, four out of every five electors in Bihar have submitted their enumeration forms (EF) as part of the ongoing SIR exercise, taking the total coverage of the drive to 80.11 per cent, an ECI official said.
“As of 6:00 p.m. today, collection crossed 6,32,59,497 or 80.11 per cent. Which means 4 out of every 5 electors in Bihar have submitted the EF. With this pace, the majority of EFs are likely to be collected much before July 25, 2025,” said an Election Commission of India (ECI) official in a statement.
It said the ECI has completed 100 per cent printing and is near completion of the distribution of EFs to all electors who were found at their addresses.
Achieving yet another step well in time, BLOs have already digitised and uploaded 4.66 crore enumeration forms in ECINet by 6:00 p.m. on Saturday, it said. ECINet is the newly developed integrated software that has subsumed all the different 40 ECI Apps that had existed earlier.
In the second phase of SIR, Booth Level Officers (BLOs) are going house-to-house to assist the electors and collect their filled Enumeration Forms, said the official statement.
Field-level functionaries, including 38 DROs, Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) covering all 243 Assembly Constituencies, and 963 AEROs, are regularly supervising the progress of SIR.
As many as 77,895 BLOs, along with the 20,603 newly appointed BLOs and other election officials, are working tirelessly to complete the exercise in time.
Over four lakh volunteers are also supporting the elderly, the disabled, sick, and vulnerable populations, along with the 1.56-lakh proactive force of Booth Level Agents (BLAs), appointed by all recognised political parties, resulting in the collection of 80.11 per cent enumeration forms.
In order to get their names included in the draft electoral rolls to be published on August 1, electors have to submit their EFs, preferably, along with eligibility documents. In case any elector needs more time to submit the eligibility documents, they can submit them separately till August 30, the last date of filing claims and objections and take the help of volunteers as well.
The SIR survey has led to a major political controversy in Bihar. The opposition INDIA bloc has raised serious concerns about this exercise. The bloc leaders allege that SIR is not just about cleaning the voter list but is a political move to remove voters and benefit the ruling NDA.
