The right to vote and the fight to live

At a cursory level, the anxiety of voters in election-bound Bihar may seem to have abated. The draft rolls published on 1 August do, after all, list 7.24 voters.

There are, however, still many unknowns and imponderables in that list, and for some, their relief may be short-lived — but that’s a story for a later date.

Investigations by some intrepid YouTubers and small media outlets are daily exposing irregularities in the draft rolls, but the Election Commission of India (ECI) is dismissing them as aberrations that don’t merit consideration.

Meanwhile, 65 lakh voters have suddenly been delegitimised, their names struck off the rolls. As feared, and flagged earlier, most are poor and marginalised — Dalits, women, Muslims — living precarious lives on the margins. So precarious that fighting for their right to vote is not a priority at this point, when half the state is underwater and people are seeking shelter on higher ground wherever it exists — on embankments, highways, bridges…

All this clearly doesn’t trouble the ECI, whose mandate it is to ensure that nobody is left out. It won’t even admit this wasn’t the best time to run an intensive revision — and has mostly turned a deaf ear to uncomfortable questions and reports of irregularities such as 197 voters in a single dilapidated house in Katihar district.

Bihar SIR and ‘Yes, Prime Minister’: Yogendra Yadav on ‘politician’s logic’

“An exercise of this scale in so short a time is just not feasible administratively,” says Vyasji, a former IAS officer of the Bihar cadre. “I have been a returning officer and also an ECI observer during elections in several other states. I am familiar with the process and so the notification for SIR (issued on 24 June) appeared bizarre and absurd, more like a Tughlaqi firman.”

The notification, he elaborates, requires printing approximately 16 crore forms, which were to be given out by booth-level officers (BLOs) to approximately 7.9 crore individual voters, retaining a copy as acknowledgment. The BLOs were also to be trained and familiarised with the paperwork.

How was it even possible to start the exercise the very next day?

Several retired IAS officers in the state, with some experience of conducting elections and working with the ECI, believe the body acted under pressure.

The final rolls are to be released on 1 September. Political workers and activists have voiced their fear that many of the voters who figure in the draft list may be eliminated in the final list. The ECI can blame it on any

number of handy reasons — from unfilled / improperly filled forms, to forged addresses, to ‘no valid documents’.

More Bihar voters from 2024 — who may not be allowed in 2025, who knows

As per Newslaundry: ‘In five constituencies, 1.5 lakh voters are clustered around just 1,200–1,300 households, an analysis of the voter rolls revealed. We investigated unusually high voter concentrations in 14 such cases — with numbers that ranged from a few dozen to several hundred names registered at a single address.’

It examined 14 cases across four constituencies with an unusually high number of voters registered, often exceeding hundreds.

The addresses themselves were vague, some identified by locality or ward number, making verification virtually impossible.

In Katihar district, the draft electoral rolls curiously show more than a hundred voters — Hindus and Muslims, privileged and marginalised —registered at the same house. In Goa, Congress finds most ‘secular’ model of voter fraud; also most space-saving

The homeowner told Newslaundry that he was not familiar with the people listed and that it was unlikely they even lived in the same ward.

Another media team was heckled, manhandled and threatened when they arrived in Katihar to enquire into the ‘197 voters at one address’. Accused of being part of a smear campaign against Narendra Modi and Nitish Kumar, they were forced to turn back.

Meanwhile, an investigation by theReporters’ Collective found that ‘the ECI has registered 509 voters from different families, castes and communities living together in a single house in Galimpur village in Pipra assembly constituency.

The number alone is not the striking part. In reality, the house does not exist!

‘Besides, how likely is it in the social reality of Bihar that such an assortment of people — different castes and communities, not just families — will live under the same roof?!

‘In the same village, there is another case: in a non-existent house, the ECI had registered 459 people as voters.

‘In three assembly constituencies — Pipra, Bagaha and Motihari — our investigation unearthed 3,590 cases where the ECI has registered 20 or more people at a single address. In many cases, the houses did not exist... over 80,000 voters have been registered in the three constituencies in this manner by the ECI.’

You wouldn’t have seen any of this on the TV channels or other mainstream news outlets.

Later, clearly acting on instructions from above, the chief election commissioner (CEC) issued a lengthy denial, dissing the booth-level findings published by the Reporters’ Collective and Newslaundry.

Meanwhile, the addition of names is as striking as the deletions.

Many of the voters added may well be fake and are registered in localities with predominantly upper-caste populations. While the deleted Dalit, OBC and Muslim communities seem resigned to their fate, there is also mounting distrust.

Mainstream media and the ECI went to town over two Pakistani women appearing on the electoral rolls in Bhagalpur. Turns out they had come to Bihar in 1956, got married and now have grandchildren. For decades, they have been registered voters, with the electoral photo identify card (EPIC) issued by the ECI.

After the initial furore, all is quiet on that front. If they were really Pakistan nationals, how were they enrolled in the first place?

The SIR seeks to influence voting behaviour in other ways too.

Darakhshan Akhtar and Naukhez Akhtar are siblings living in the same house in a predominantly Muslim locality in Gaya. While Darakhshan is registered as a voter in polling station #213 of the Gaya Town assembly constituency, her brother Naukhez figures in polling station #216 and is shown as a resident of Rampur, 2 kilometres away from where they live. The booth change is inexplicable, and Naukhez freely admits he won’t dare go to Rampur — a Hindu-majority area — to cast his vote.

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Meanwhile, the Voter Adhikar Yatra is bringing home the reality of this large-scale manipulation to those still living in denial. INDIA bloc leaders from other states have joined the Yatra, which has not only energised the movement but also showcased a broader unity.

Even as the media seeks to drive a wedge between the INDIA bloc and independent MP Pappu Yadav and the AIMIM, Yadav joined the Yatra and hailed RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav as representing hope for the state. AIMIM supporters thronged rallies addressed by INDIA bloc leaders and demanded that their party be included in the alliance.

On 27 August, DMK chief M.K. Stalin joined the Yatra, calling it a means of “turning people’s pain into unstoppable strength”.

Local media, however, questions the Opposition’s electoral prospects. Even as Mukesh Sahni, an influential leader of the Vikassheel Insan Party, vows to teach ‘vote chors’ a lesson, daily reports suggest Sahni and others are ‘Trojan horses’ in the bloc.

Articles also highlight the caste equation, and conclude that without the support of Upendra Kushwaha, who is with the NDA, the Opposition’s chances are slim.

It’s worth remembering that winning margins in the last assembly election were small, and in several constituencies, the number of voters deleted exceeds the winning margins of 2020.

SIR: Did the Election Commission lie to the Supreme Court?