The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Friday declared that 94.68% of Bihar's electorate has been covered in the current Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls. With only a week remaining in the counting stage, the process is nearing completion.
The draft electoral rolls will be made public on August 1, as per a press release. Political parties and the public will then have a month to see it and propose corrections or changes.
Of Bihar's 7.89 crore voter population, more than 7.11 crore enumeration forms have been collected so far, of which 6.85 crore have been digitised. Another 41 lakh forms are yet to be processed. Additionally, nearly 36.8 lakh voters were not traced at the given addresses.
Of these, over 12.7 lakh have been said to have died, and 18.1 lakh have shown to have shifted permanently. Also, 5.9 lakh persons have been marked for having registered in over one place.
To promote transparency and accuracy in data, the ECI has shared information of such voters with political party district in-charges and more than 1.5 lakh booth-level agents (BLAs) who are appointed by these parties. Every BLA is allowed to file a maximum of 50 verified forms every day until July 25.
This collective verification campaign is aimed at not letting any eligible citizen be erroneously left out of the voter roll.
After resolving all claims and objections by September 25, the final electoral rolls will be published on September 30. Both electronic and hard copies will be provided to identified political parties and posted on the ECI official website.
Any such voter who feels they've been unjustly denied must appeal under Section 24 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, either with the District Magistrate or with the Chief Electoral Officer.
This exercise of revision is a preparation for the Bihar Assembly elections, which are expected to be held later this year. The strategy of the ECI reflects its commitment to electoral integrity in the state of Bihar, where the reliability of voter rolls has been a matter of controversy for a long time.
Political observers say that party allegiance accusations can be minimized and more public confidence may be generated if BLAs are included in the scrutiny process.
With the last list of voters to be published in September, the ground is slowly being laid for what promises to be a closely contested and closely observed election.
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