The Election Commission on Tuesday announced a special intensive revision of the electoral rolls in Bihar, ahead of the Assembly elections scheduled to be held at the end of the year.

The review was necessitated by factors such as rapid urbanisation, frequent migration, fresh voters, non-reported deaths and the “inclusion of the names of foreign illegal immigrants,” the poll panel state in a press note.

This is the first time that the Election Commission has talked about undocumented migrants being part of the electoral roll in the state where the last special intensive revision was done in 2003, the Hindustan Times reported.

As of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Bihar had 7.72 crore registered electors.

A fundamental pre-condition under Article 326 of the Constitution requires individuals to be Indian citizens for voter registration, Deputy Election Commissioner Sanjay Kumar said in correspondence with Bihar chief electoral officer, the newspaper reported.

“The commission has a constitutional obligation to ensure that only persons who are citizens [are enrolled in the electoral roll],” Kumar reportedly added.

“The commission has now decided to begin the SIR [special intensive revision] in the entire country for the discharge of its constitutional mandate to protect the integrity of the electoral rolls,” the poll officer was quoted as saying by the Hindustan Times.

Bihar will be the first state to undergo the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls.

The announcement came on the day Congress leader Rahul Gandhi alleged that “vote theft” had taken place in the Maharashtra Assembly elections held in November. Gandhi demanded the immediate release of machine-readable digital voter rolls and CCTV footage of the election.