Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav on Saturday alleged that the Election Commission of India removed the names of around 65 lakh voters after the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls ahead of the Bihar elections.
The former Deputy Chief Minister further alleged that the poll panel has not provided any details, like address or EPIC number, of such voters so that they can be cross-verified.
Almost 20 to 30 thousand names have been removed from every assembly constituency. A total of around 65 lakh, meaning about 8.5% of voters’ names, have been removed from the list,” Yadav said while speaking to reporters in Patna.
“Whenever the Election Commission issued an advertisement, it used to mention that so many people have shifted, so many people are deceased, and so many people had duplicate names… But in the list provided to us by the Election Commission, they have cleverly not given the address of any voter, no booth number, and no EPIC number, so that we cannot find out whose names have been removed from the voter list…,” he added.
#WATCH | Patna: RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav says, “Almost 20 to 30 thousand names have been removed from every assembly constituency. A total of around 65 lakh, meaning about 8.5% of voters’ names, have been removed from the list. Whenever the Election Commission issued an… pic.twitter.com/BkijaJ0TK7
— ANI (@ANI) August 2, 2025
EC Releases SIR First Draft
The Election Commission of India on Friday released the first draft of the revised voter list on its website. The rolls were published after a month-long intensive revision exercise.
Following the publishing of the voter list, RJD submitted a memorandum to the Chief Electoral Officer of Bihar expressing its dissatisfaction with the system. It demanded that an ‘assembly segment-wise’ break-up conveniently downloaded “in a pen drive or on a CD”.
The Congress also challenged the EC to disclose “how many foreign nationals” were found to have been included in the voters’ list prior to SIR and whether they have been dropped in the ‘draft electoral rolls’.