Bihar Voter
Controversy: Defusing the Bomb, or Hiding it from Public View?
Shrikant G. Talageri
The Bihar Vidhan Sabha elections 2025 have taken place, and the results will be declared tomorrow, 14th November 2025. Before the results, whatever those results may turn out to be, a look at the Bihar Voter Controversy, or the “SIR Controversy” as it is being called.
One exemplary article, dated 5th October 2925, explaining the controversy (for those who don’t know what exactly it is):
“Bihar Assembly Election 2025: The suspense over the final voter roll for Bihar ended on Wednesday when the Election Commission of India (ECI) made public the list after three months of Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Bihar. The exercise, conducted after a gap of 22 years, witnessed objections, campaigns, hearing and what not – and the outcome is here. Bihar now has 7.42 crore eligible voters who would exercise their franchise in the upcoming assembly elections.
The
number is 47 lakh less from what the list had on June 24, 2025, when the ECI
announced the SIR in the state. This has now cleared the way for the election
commission to go ahead with Bihar poll schedule. While the mass
disenfranchisement of voters claim did not hold any ground, the campaign done
by the opposition, individuals and civil society along with Supreme Court’s
orders and media reports – the ground level checks seem to have been ensured,
at least the outcome suggests so.
Why was the SIR done?
Throughout his
campaigns, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has reiterated that illegal
immigrants have taken the rights of an Indian citizen, severely impacting the
resource distribution, opportunities and more. The Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP), during the entire time when the SIR was being done, blamed the
opposition for saving immigrants, ‘Bangladeshis’.
It reiterated that the NDA government-led
by the BJP, won’t let this happen, and backed this with the wave of nationalism
in Bihar..
The sole reason for conducting the SIR was to remove
illegal voters from the list, on whose names fraud may happen. This included
illegal immigrants, voters who have died, and those who have migrated among
others. The ECI declared to conduct the exercise on June 24 and the filling of
enumeration forms began the next day.
A number of
instructions were given to the voters, booth level officers (BLOs) were given
tasks to monitor and guide citizens. And so began the confusions too. With only
three months for Bihar elections, the timing seemed less with so much to be
done. One month deadline was set to fill the forms for Bihar voters, and
objections were to be filed in August, followed by final checks in September.
A routine
revision of voter roll takes place every year or at least every time election
is held in a state. A routine clean-up keeps the voters list robust ensuring
free and fair elections. However, this time in Bihar, the ECI asked the voters
to prove their citizenship (which was not the clause during the last SIR in
the state in 2003). There were 11 documents that one could bring to prove the
same, and it did not have Aadhaar card.
As for the scale of the exercise, the ECI said it could only be done by sincere efforts of Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Bihar, District Election Officers (DEOs) of all 38 districts, 243 Electoral Registration Officers (EROs), 2,976 Assistant Electoral Registration Officers (AEROs), around 1 lakh Booth Level Officers (BLOs), lakhs of volunteers and the full involvement of all the 12 major Political Parties , including their district presidents and over 1.6 lakh Booth Level Agents (BLAs) appointed by them.
The SIR: Objections, case, and SC orders
The opposition
began campaigning against the SIR calling it a “vote theft” exercise by the
ECI. Congress MP Rahul Gandhi and RJD leader Tejashwi Yadavi led the “vote
chori” rallies and the issued even saw protests in parliament during the
monsoon session.
A presser by
the CED Gyanesh Kumar to address the allegations of the opposition parties did
not give a clear picture. Rather, the press conference raised many questions on
the mode of the SIR and EC’s response to those raising questions rather than
attempt to address the same.
A batch of petitions were filed in the top
court, which heard the arguments at length. Though the court did not stay the
exercise, but questioned the timing. The ECI justified that a large number of
forms were already filled by the team petitions were filed and the process will
be completed by September 30, as per the deadline.
The SC noted
the same, but ordered the poll panel to consider Aadhaar in the list of
documents as ’12th document’, which the ECI was against.
Bihar SIR final
roll
The final SIR
was published a scheduled on Sept 30, even though the apex court will hear the
final arguments on October 7. The draft roll in August had 65 lakh names less,
which the SC asked the ECI to publish so as to make people aware and give them
an opportunity to make objection.
In the run-up to the final roll, 3.66 lakh more names were deleted
while 21.53 lakhs eligible voters were added or re-added. Overall, the final
draft roll now has 7.42 crore voters, an effective reduction of 47 lakh voters
from the EC’s June 24 voter roll that had 7.89 crore voters.
Now, the ongoing analysis of these deletions region and constituency wise would provide the clear picture. As of now, nearly all the constituencies have seen an overall reduction in the number of voters. The opposition is yet to come out with some kind of detailed result from the SIR.
Meanwhile, the ECI is also preparing for a nationwide SIR and the Bihar example is what they should consider as learning.”
The elections are now over, and the results will be
out tomorrow. Who will win, and will the results have been affected by the SIR
exercise?
If the BJP (NDA) wins, will it indicate that it has
won because all the illegal (Bangladeshi) voters who would have voted against
them were unable to do so? If they lose, will it indicate that the rot is even
deeper, and that the number of illegal (Bangladeshi) voters is still
substantial enough to affect the elections; or will it indicate that the
exercise was a sham and that the legitimate voters realized this and voted
against them?
Leaving aside the question of who wins and who loses,
and the speculative aspects of how the exercise affected the elections, let us
see what the facts are:
1. It is a fact that there are literally millions of illegal
(Bangladeshi) voters all over India (and particularly of course in Bengal, Bihar,
Assam and the northeast).
2. But it is also a fact that every single
political party (very much ncluding the BJP: Voice of
India publications, and several independent news reports and alert Hindu
individuals, in the last few decades, have pointed this out and elaborated the
point in ruthless detail) has played a major role in bringing and establishing
these illegal (Bangladeshi) voters all over India and helping them to
legitimize their presence by providing them, or enabling them to provide
themselves, with all the necessary documents facilities. Let us also note in
passing that none of this would have been possible, and these illegal (Bangladeshi)
voters would not have been able to blend into the local populations, if Dr
Ambedkar’s solution of a peaceful transfer of population in 1947 had been
adopted – but the dark deed was done in 1947 and is now irreversible. So no political
party is a hero or villain in this story.
So what is going to be done now? Will the 47 lakh+++ illegal
(Bangladeshi) voters in Bihar, whose names were deleted, be caught and deported
back to Bangladesh or wherever they came from? And what about the (how many?)
crores+++ who will be detected when (or if), as
promised/claimed/threatened in the above article, a similar SIR exercise is
conducted all over India? Does anyone in India, let alone any vote-hungry-and-election-obsessed
mercenary politician (from any party), have the guts in his balls to
even dream or think of doing this?
Clearly, the whole exercise was an election centered
exercise, to try to cut out the votes that may go against the BJP. As always, the
BJP’s “Hindutva” or even its plain “nationalism”, is a short term election-time-restricted
phenomenon: calculated only to help them win the elections of the present moment.
Whatever will happen in future: to hell with it. The ticking bomb will not
be defused, it will remain where it is: it will only be covered with a burqa to
hide it from public view.
To be frank I genuinely believe India will be Islamic
in 50 years (or at the most 100 years). Not only are certain things almost
irreversible, the fact is no-one is really interested in reversing them.
Short-sighted momentary gains and impressions are all that matter to the
politicians as well as their bhakts.
So I am not advocating the impossible. I am only advocating
the possible: even if India becomes Islamic or simply “Muslim” in 50-100 years,
there is no reason why the condition of Hindus at least for these 50-100 years
(and hopefully even after that) cannot be made less unfair by giving them equal
rights with the Muslims and Christians as advocated by people like Anand
Ranganathan and M Nageswara Rao and so many other Hindu intellectuals and
thinkers.
But sadly, in this world of mercenary “Hindutva-politicians”
and their bhakts, even asking for mere equality for Hindus in India is
also asking for the impossible.
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