The Election Commission is carrying out a “special intensive revision” of Bihar’s electoral roll in the run-up to the state’s Assembly elections later this year.
In effect, the entire voter list for the state will be discarded to be replaced by a new one. Moreover, every voter in the state will have to prove that they are an Indian citizen to be able to vote.
The ECI believes that the state needs a new list because of the inclusion of names of “foreign illegal immigrants” and dead voters as well as movement of voters because of “rapid urbanisation” and “frequent migration”.
An ECI official, while responding to Scroll’s question on whether the poll body had data or any evidence for the presence of foreign illegal immigrants on the voter list, claimed that “regular inputs keep coming regarding presence of such persons” on the list. However, the official did not share any data or evidence of the same.
By the ECI’s own estimate, a staggering 2.93 crore voters in Bihar will have to prove their citizenship through additional documents.
Opposition leaders have called the exercise an attempt to covertly implement the National Register of Citizens through the backdoor, which could potentially disenfranchise thousands of voters.
The National Register of Citizens was updated in Assam in 2019, after a mammoth scrutiny of ancestral family documents to weed out “illegal immigrants”, and ended up excluding 19 lakh residents of the state. So contested was the exercise that the Bharatiya Janata Party government refused to notify it.
In 2019, Union home minister Amit Shah had repeatedly promised that such an exercise would be carried out across the country – and that it would be linked with the contentious Citizenship Amendment Act. The Modi government’s new citizenship law fast-tracked citizenship for undocumented migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan but excluded Muslims from the amnesty.
Shah’s comments sparked nationwide street protests mostly led by Muslims, who feared that they would be disenfranchised in any such exercise. In response, the Narendra Modi government denied any link between the CAA and the NRC and shelved the idea of a nationwide citizen count.
West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee and leader of Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Liberation, Dipankar Bhattacharya, have both warned that the special intensive revision of rolls in Bihar is an attempt to reintroduce the NRC.
Several booth level officers and politicians in Bihar also told Scroll that they were sceptical about the logistical viability of the revision and argued that it would adversely affect the most vulnerable sections of society, especially Dalits and Muslims.
“We don’t know why the ECI has taken this decision now,” said a senior functionary of a political party that is part of Bihar’s ruling National Democratic Alliance, requesting anonymity. “It is quite impossible to carry out this revision within their schedule.”
The Election Commission has set aside only three months for the entire revision process leading up to the preparation of the final electoral roll. An ECI official told Scroll that the exercise will be completed in time since over two lakh officials have been deployed for it.
The official added that the electoral roll, or the voter list, has been revised in Bihar even before the previous elections. “ECI has been conducting annual revisions (intensive as well as summary) for over 70 years, it does not mean that ECI is doubting its electoral roll anyway,” said the official. “But this is a required exercise as the electoral roll is always a dynamic list which keeps changing…”
The senior functionary of the NDA ally added that caste groups that vote for the party will likely struggle to produce the documents demanded by the ECI. “Among the Musahar and Dom castes, voters hardly possess the documents that they are demanding. How will they prove their citizenship?” the functionary asked. Musahars and Doms are Dalit communities in Bihar.
What is the exercise?
Bihar has 7.9 crore registered voters, according to the Election Commission. Between June 25 and July 26, booth level officers, or BLOs, in Bihar will go door-to-door to verify if these voters are genuine.
If the officers are satisfied, the voters will be re-enrolled to a new voter list by electoral registration officers, or EROs, who are usually officials from the local administration. If not, they will be removed from the voter lists. A draft roll will be published on August 1 and the final roll will be out on September 30.
This process is called a special intensive revision, or SIR, and it was last held in Bihar in 2003.
The ECI’s 2023 manual on electoral rolls says that in such a revision, BLOs visit every household in his assigned area and note down “all relevant particulars of the eligible persons staying in each house” in an electoral card.
Based on these cards, which are checked by senior election officials, the ECI prepares a written manuscript.
“Thereafter, the manuscript is computerised and a draft roll is prepared and published, inviting claims and objections,” says the manual. “After disposal of such claims and objections, the roll is finally published.”
The difference this time around is that the poll body has announced it will verify every voter’s citizenship to allow them onto the new voter list.
This will be easiest for those who were on the list prepared after the 2003 revision of rolls – the Election Commission has said they will be assumed to be Indian citizens and will only have to fill up an enumeration form provided by their BLOs along with a copy of the 2003 voter list with their name in it.
The ECI’s 2023 manual does not mention that a special intensive revision of rolls requires a determination of citizenship.
The citizenship test
Those who are not on the 2003 list will have to provide additional documents depending on their date of birth.
The ECI has made three categories, which have been determined in line with the provisions of the Citizenship Act, 1955.
Those born before July 1, 1987, will have to produce a proof of either their date of birth or place of birth, or both. Those born between July 1, 1987, and December 2, 2004, will have to produce the above proof, as well as a similar proof for one of their parents. Those born after December 2, 2004, will have to produce this proof for themselves and for both their parents.
This test was not applied in the 2003 revision of rolls either. A 2003 Times of India report said that the SIR that year included “a detailed verification of each voter's photo identity card to remove any discrepancy between the card and the roll.”
The ECI official said that he will have to find that out whether the citizenship test was applied during the 2003 revision.
The Election Commission has provided an indicative list of documents that can be furnished as proof.
Voters who cannot provide documents the EC has asked for will be removed from a draft voter list, which they can appeal before the publication of the final list.
Former chief election commissioner OP Rawat told Scroll that the poll body has ordered a special intensive revision because it has a mandate to revise voter lists. “The only difference is that instead of a summary revision, it has now ordered an intensive revision,” he said. “I believe that the ECI thinks that a lot of existing voters in Bihar are not Indian citizens.”
‘Right to vote in danger’
On June 27, Tejashwi Yadav of the Rashtriya Janata Dal, the chief opposition party in Bihar, said that the exercise was “suspicious and worrying”.
“Why did a big exercise like special intensive revision suddenly become necessary after 22 years just two months before the elections?” he asked.
Yadav claimed that since more than 4 crore voters in Bihar are between 20 and 38 years of age, nearly 50% of the total electorate will have to prove their and one of their parents’ citizenship in a matter of weeks.
“For the people in villages, the Scheduled Castes, Adivasis, minorities and backward classes, this new process is a mountainous challenge,” he added. “No documents, no resources, and now even the right to vote is in danger?”
The Congress party also opposed the exercise, calling it a “devious and dubious idea in the disguise of a solution”.
It added that the right to vote of Bihar’s voters will now be in the hands of central and state government officials. “This carries a huge risk of willful exclusion of voters using the power of the state machinery,” it added.
According to the Bihar CEO, the state has 77,895 BLOs, as of June 12, 2025. This means that on average, every BLO will have to visit a thousand voters before July 26 to collect their enumeration forms and other documents.
For many underpaid and overworked booth level officers, this is a daunting task.
Rajkumar Gond, a BLO in Jigina village in Kaimur district, told Scroll that it will be very difficult for him to survey nearly 1,400 voters in his village before July 26.
“I’m a teacher at the local school and my duty there lasts 8 hours every day,” he said. “Now, we will have to finish school and go door-to-door [for the revision]. It is an important responsibility so we will have to work all night. It is a tiring job.”
The Seemanchal problem
Tauquir Alam, a national secretary of the Congress party, told Scroll that the Seemanchal region of Bihar is more vulnerable to complications than others. “It is a hotspot of migration and floods,” said Alam. “People go to Delhi and Punjab to work in large numbers. How many of them can come back for this exercise?”
According to government data, about 7% of Bihar’s population has migrated to other states, of which 30% have migrated for employment opportunities.
Alam emphasised that the region, which includes Purnea, Kishanganj, Katihar and Araria districts, has the highest number of Muslim voters, some of whom speak Bengali. “This is an undeclared NRC and their votes are at risk,” he said.
Sixty eight per cent of Kishanganj’s population is Muslim, the highest in the state, according to the 2011 census. It is followed by Katihar at 45%, Araria at 43% and Purnia at 39%.
At 12%, Katihar has the highest population of Bengali-speakers in Bihar, according to the last census.
Asaduddin Owaisi of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, which won five of the 23 Assembly seats in Seemanchal in the 2020 state polls, has slammed the revision exercise as a “cruel joke”.
What the BLOs say
Former chief election commissioner OP Rawat told Scroll that the special intensive revision may look like a difficult exercise to an outsider, but the election machinery is up for the task.
“Out of the 1,000 voters in a village on average, 700-800 will be on the 2003 voter list,” said Rawat. “Out of the remaining who are not on that list, 150 should be able to provide their documents. It’ll only be about 50 people per booth who might face difficulties. But the ECI will be able to sort these problems out.”
But BLOs in Bihar paint a more challenging picture.
Ashfaq Alam, 32, who was a booth level officer in Lohagada village in Kishanganj between 2016 and 2023, told Scroll that the village had about 1,500 voters, out of which only 50-60 voters will be able to prove their citizenship.
“This is the last district of Bihar and it is the most backward,” said Alam. “Hardly 2% of the people here will have their birth certificates.”
Alam is from the Shershahbadi community, a Bengali-speaking Muslim caste classified as an extremely backward class in Bihar. They have a significant presence in Lohagada, along with Musahars and Santhals, an Adivasi community listed as a Scheduled Tribe in the state.
“In 2017, there was an overnight flood and most people did not get the time to collect their possessions. They simply ran,” Alam added. “The Santhals were worst affected because they live in homes made of mud. None of their documents survived.”
The ECI official, however, said that citizens without documents can use a family register, also called a vanshawali or a parivar register, that can be obtained from local bodies, to prove their citizenship.
Family registers are maintained by the gram panchayat secretary under the Bihar Gram Panchayat Rules, 2011. The register contains “necessary information” on every member of the panchayat.
Vilas Kumar Harijan, a BLO in Chowka village in Purnea district, also said that illiterate people in his village will struggle to produce proof of citizenship. “About half of the village can’t read and write,” he said. “They will have to fall back on their Aadhaar cards and ration cards [for the revision].”
Bihar’s leader of Opposition, Tejashwi Yadav, has claimed that the ECI will not accept Aadhaar cards as a proof of date of birth.
Asked about Aadhaar’s validity for this exercise, the ECI official said that “accepting any document beyond the list provided by the ECI depends on the electoral registration officers,” since the ERO has to satisfy the eligibility of any voter before entering his name in the list.
The ECI official also pointed out that political parties can scrutinise the process.
The poll body allows local voters selected by political parties to work alongside BLOs to make sure that the voter lists are accurate. They are called booth level agents, or BLAs. According to the poll body, there are 1.54 lakh BLAs in Bihar.
But the Opposition parties are at a disadvantage. Data available with the Chief Electoral Officer in Bihar shows that the RJD and the INC have 13,065 fewer BLAs than the governing NDA alliance, which includes the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Janata Dal (United).
The BJP and its allies have supported the revision. The saffron party said that the Opposition complaints over the exercise show that “the wheel of their election vehicle has got punctured”. Its ally, Lok Jan Shakti (Ram Vilas) leader Chirag Paswan, has taken the same view.
A JD(U) spokesperson told Indian Express that the revision is “beneficial for everyone” and an “opportunity to include more people in the democratic process”.
Jitan Ram Manjhi of the Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular) alleged that many seats in the state have up to 20,000 “bogus voters” which the opposition would have capitalised on. “Now, following the special intensive revision, names of such bogus voters would be struck off, much to their chagrin," he added.
The ECI official told Scroll that nearly 1 lakh volunteers would be assisting elderly, sick, marginalised groups to “ensure that no eligible voter is left out”.
Rawat was confident that despite challenges, the system will work well during the intensive revision. But he did have a small warning. “All political parties will try to not include certain voters in the voter list. The ECI will have to be prepared for it.”
