While all parties have boosted the number of their workers enrolled as Booth Level Agents (BLA), to varying degrees, other workers too have been sent out to meet people – especially in remote rural areas – to help with filling enumeration forms and finding the requisite documents for the SIR.
The RJD, which is leading the challenge to the ruling NDA, admitted that the momentum of its political activities, ahead of the approaching elections, has taken a hit.
RJD spokesperson Nawal Kishore said the party had been gearing up to take to the people “the vision and ideas” of party leader Tejashwi Prasad Yadav, while exposing the “failures” of the NDA government, especially on law and order. The RJD also planned to reach out to at least one lakh women with application forms of the ‘Mai Bahin Maan Yojana’ – entitling every woman to Rs 2,500 monthly if the Mahagathbandhan came to power – across all the 243 Assembly constituencies.
However, the party’s energies are now devoted to handling the SIR. The poor and marginalised, who are a key RJD vote bank, are likely to be the worst hit in the roll revision exercise as most of them don’t have the documents the EC wants.
On July 9, a rally by the RJD-led Mahagathbandhan, which includes the Congress and Left parties, focused on the SIR issue. Senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi participated in a protest march along with RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav, while the alliance enforced a bandh across the state.
AICC secretary Shahnawaz Alam, who has been assigned Bihar for organisational work by the party, says the Congress has appointed BLAs for all Assembly seats. The party is trying to tie up its ongoing programmes with the SIR outreach, and so its workers who have the goal of contacting up to 400 houses daily to publicise Mai Bahin Maan Yojana are also helping people fill up SIR enumeration forms.
The Congress recently organised a workshop of its district president and observers in Patna on the SIR.
It has also been emphasising in its meetings with specific communities, like OBCs, Dalits and tribals, that through the SIR, the BJP government at the Centre wanted “to delete names of its opponents from the electoral rolls”.
AIMIM spokesperson Adil Hasan said that while the party, still a relatively new entrant in Bihar, does not have BLAs, its local office-bearers are pitching in. “They inform EC officials if they receive information about Booth Level Officers refusing to accept Aadhaar, or rejecting enumeration forms on grounds of them being incomplete, or turning down requests to correct voter details in electoral rolls,” Hasan said.
AIMIM workers are also helping voters fill up application forms, and procure documents such as caste, birth and domicile from the appropriate authorities.
The AIMIM has particularly upped its outreach in the Muslim-dominated Seemanchal, where it found electoral success in 2020 and where anxiety about the SIR is the most. Later this month, the party proposes to hold an ‘Insaf Sammelan (Justice Meeting)’ in Gaya, to be addressed by chief Asaduddin Owaisi.
A marginal player in Bihar, the BSP has also diverted its energy to the SIR issue, and has announced camps in nearly 50 Assembly constituencies along the border with its home state Uttar Pradesh, to guide its core vote base Dalits and EBCs in getting their names into the updated electoral rolls. BSP leaders said the party plans to hold camps across all the seats.
The party began its public and worker meetings a while back, and on June 26, the birth anniversary of Chhatrapati Shahu Ji Maharaj, held a programme in Patna that was addressed by its chief national coordinator Akash Anand. A senior BSP functionary said: “The party had decided to hold one such meeting every month. But this idea has been put on hold now due to the SIR… As most of the voters in rural areas of these 50 seats (the party is concentrating on) are poor and not aware about the process to be followed to obtain certificates of caste, birth and domicile, BSP workers are guiding them.”
In the 2020 polls, the BSP had contested in alliance with the Rashtriya Lok Samata Party and AIMIM. Its candidate Zama Khan was elected MLA from Chainpur, but later joined the JD(U) and is currently a minister in the Nitish Kumar government.
Unlike Opposition parties, the NDA constituents are more relaxed about the SIR drive. The biggest JD(U) outreach so far has been the cycle rallies it took out on July 8 to create awareness about the need to re-register as voters and how to go about it.
JD(U) spokesperson Anjum Ara said their BLAs were fully cooperating with Booth Level Officers, and helping clear “misconceptions” spread by the Opposition regarding the SIR. “The poor, deprived, OBCs, most backwards and Dalits were in maximum panic. But now there is no panic. Even people who do not have documents, their forms are being accepted. We are keeping an eye on the voters’ list to ensure that those eligible are not left out,” Ara said.