AS THE Election Commission Tuesday published the final electoral rolls for Bihar, following a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) drive, Opposition parties RJD and Congress said the NDA government at the Centre had failed “in its nefarious bid of mass exclusion of electors”.
Thanking the Supreme Court for directing the EC to allow Aadhaar card apart from the 11 documents mandated by it for enrolment in the SIR, the Mahagathbandhan allies also attributed this to the Voter Adhikar Yatra of Rahul Gandhi and Tejashwi Yadav.
Their yatra from August 17 to September 1, across 23 of 38 Bihar districts, the parties said, had “put the EC and Centre under pressure to not attempt any further deletions, using the excuse that electors were not able to submit the required documents”.
The final electoral roll for Bihar has 7.42 crore voters. This is a drop of more than 47 lakh since June, when the SIR was launched, but higher than the 7.24 crore names in the draft roll released in August.
Names of 65 lakh electors had been knocked off in the draft list, as they were found to be “absent”, “shifted” or “dead”. According to a statement issued by the Chief Electoral Officer of Bihar Tuesday, names of 21.53 lakh “eligible voters”, which got left out in the draft roll, have been added since, but names of 3.66 lakh which were included in it have been deleted, in the course of the “claims and objections” phase.
RJD national spokesperson Subodh Kumar Mehta told The Indian Express: “The SIR process served little purpose and it was even worse than the annual summary revision (held by the poll panel). Most Booth Level Officers (BLOs) did not even visit the voters and only did paperwork. No real scrutiny was done. What it did was expose the NDA government’s nefarious exclusionary tactics. But they could not succeed, as the combined Opposition made it a big issue with its Voter Adhikar Yatra and its vote chori pitch.”
Given the short duration over which the SIR process was conducted, the hardpressed BLOs rushed through the checks required, which the Opposition has been highlighting.
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Mehta also thanked the Supreme Court for asking the EC to accept Aadhaar as one of the valid documents voters could submit. “Had the Supreme Court not directed the EC to allow the Aadhaar card as the 12th document, there could have been more deletions. It was also because of pressure from us that the EC simultaneously started a drive to add new voters.”
The RJD leader said the party would study the reasons behind why 3.66 lakh voters were eventually deleted from the rolls. “Overall, though, it is a victory of democracy.”
Mehta credited both senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and senior RJD leader Tejashwi with rousing the public on the issue. “The slogan ‘Vote chor, gaddi chhor (Vote thief, leave the post)’ became a popular one, and voters realised that there was something doubtful about the entire exercise,” he said.
Bihar Congress president Rajesh Kumar said: “It was only because of the Voter Adhikar Yatra and our leader Rahul Gandhi’s expose on vote chori that the EC did not attempt mass deletion of electors. We along with others also put forth our views strongly in the Supreme Court. New voters were added because of pressure from us.”
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The EC, Kumar said, was afraid of Gandhi’s “bombs” – the word used by the Congress leader to describe his “vote theft revelations”.
The CPI (M-L) Liberation, which is also a part of the Mahagathbandhan, said the Opposition’s protests against the SIR had worked. However, its state secretary Kunal said, “We still believe that several thousands of people have been wrongly deleted… The SIR process did not serve any purpose. The dead electors could have been deleted (from the poll rolls) even via the annual summary revision.”