The delegation, comprised of Rajaram Singh (MP, Karakat and CPI(ML) Floor Leader in Lok Sabha), Sudama Prasad (MP, Ara), Shyam Chandra Chaudhary (Secretary, Bihar State Committee) and Sanjay Sharma (Central Headquarters, CPI(ML), raised serious concerns about procedural violations, exclusionary practices, and the danger of mass disenfranchisement of poor, migrant, and young voters.
Below are the main issues raised in the memorandum:
1. Contrary to the assurances given by the EC about house-to-house visits by BLOs and distribution of two enumeration forms to every elector, it is widely observed that many households and electors have never been visited even once, and most electors have received only one form. There are any number of reports of forms being submitted without distribution or without being signed by concerned electors or in the names of electors who have long passed away. Reports of corruption and charging of fees are also quite widespread. In Patna and some other corporation areas of Bihar there are reports of municipal corporations distributing unauthenticated forms. We are afraid the whole process has been reduced to a farcical statistical exercise of submission of papers and production of numbers.
2. While our own field reports and independent media coverage suggests flagrant violation of the EC's stipulated norms, we are deeply disturbed by certain media reports attributed to EC 'sources' and some of the communiques issued by the EC. We would like to draw your attention to two major points:
a) On 13 July 2025 reports appeared widely in the media about BLOs coming across large numbers of foreign nationals from Bangladesh, Nepal and Myanmar in their house-to-house visits. May we remind you that on 10 July 2019 Parliament was informed by then Law and Justice Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on the basis of ECI's own response that in the four-year period of 2016-19 there were only three cases of reported foreign nationals in India's electoral rolls - one each from Telangana, Gujarat and West Bengal in 2018. The Lok Sabha elections held just a year ago and even the special summary revision of the electoral rolls undertaken after the 2024 polls noticed no such cases in Bihar. This story of sudden discovery of large-scale influx of foreign nationals in Bihar therefore defies credulity.
b) Even as enumeration forms are being submitted and the phase of scrutiny and disposal of claims and counter-claims is still awaited, the EC press release of 18 July mentions large numbers of death (1.61% or 12,71,414), relocation (2.3% or 18,16,306) and duplication (0.75% or 5,92,273) indicating a likely deletion of some 3.69 million names from the rolls. This number shot up to 4.39 million in the EC press release issued yesterday. Did the summary revision fail to note this and revise the rolls accordingly? Or these deaths, relocations and duplications are all recent developments pertaining to the revised rolls? The EC expects political parties to help trace the electors whose enumeration forms have not been submitted yet. With only four days left for the submission of enumeration forms, how can it be possible to contact and verify such a large number of electors?
3. The EC has belatedly come out with newspaper advertisements that migrant workers can submit forms online. But how will the overwhelming majority of migrant workers working in sectors like agriculture and construction even get this information and access this online facility? The least the EC should have done is to organise an effective information campaign and arrange easily accessible enrolment camps for migrant workers.
4. You have repeatedly reminded the electors that they will have to submit supporting documents within August. It is however well known that large numbers of electors do not have the documents mentioned in the EC's indicative list of eleven documents. Even applying for possible documents like domicile certificate or caste certificate has now become inordinately difficult and in all likelihood millions will not be able to submit any documents unless the EC accepts the Supreme Court suggestion of including Aadhaar cards, ration cards or voter cards. Leaving it to the EROs to decide about all such cases on the basis of local investigations would leave the electoral roll susceptible to all kinds of bias and arbitrary administrative errors and possible manipulations and thus render the integrity of the electoral roll highly suspect.
5. On the basis of our experience of the first four weeks of the SIR drive in Bihar, we are afraid that mass disenfranchisement remains a very real danger for Bihar's poor, women, migrant workers and young electors, with all its alarming consequences.
6. By asking all post-2003 electors who have voted in five Assembly and five Lok Sabha elections in the 2004-2024 period to prove their eligibility on the basis of supporting documents the SIR conflates the electoral roll with the controversial idea of a citizenship register. The EC must be aware that even after two rounds of intensive examination of documents under Supreme Court monitoring through two rounds spread over six years, the Assam government does not accept the validity of the NRC in Assam. On 25 February 2020, the State Assembly of Bihar adopted a consensus resolution ruling out any NRC in Bihar. Yet the EC's indicative list mentions a non-existent NRC as an acceptable document and for all practical purposes, the SIR has subjected the common electors of Bihar to the combined trauma of hugely disruptive exercises like demonetisation and NRC.
7. We therefore once again urge the EC to withdraw the SIR circular and conduct the forthcoming Assembly elections of Bihar on the basis of a duly updated version of the electoral rolls used for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Universal adult franchise remains central to the democratic republic envisioned in the Constitution of India. There must be no weakening of this crucial cornerstone of our constitutional democracy.
