The Election Commission on Sunday rejected claims made by Congress leader P Chidambaram that reports had shown 6.5 lakh persons were added to the electoral rolls in Tamil Nadu amid the special intensive revision of the voter list in Bihar.

The poll panel described the claims as being “misleading and baseless” and added that the exercise to revise electoral rolls in Tamil Nadu is yet to begin.

“It is therefore absurd to connect the SIR exercise in Bihar with TN,” said the Election Commission. “Such peddling of false statements with respect to SIR should be avoided.”

On Sunday, Chidambaram said that reports of migrant workers from Bihar being enrolled as voters in Tamil Nadu were “alarming and patently illegal”.

“Calling them ‘permanently migrated’ is an insult to the migrant workers and a gross interference in the right of the electorate of Tamil Nadu to elect a government of its choice,” the Congress leader said in a social media post.

He added: “Why should the migrant worker not return to Bihar (or his/her home state) to vote in the state Assembly election, as they usually do?”

To be enrolled as a voter, a person must have a permanent or fixed address, wrote Chidambaram, adding that migrant workers have such homes in the states they come from.

“If the migrant worker's family has a permanent home in Bihar and lives in Bihar, how can the migrant worker be considered as ‘permanently migrated’ to Tamil Nadu?” he asked.

Rejecting the claims, the Election Commission stated that such reports were being “deliberately peddled in the media with a view to obstruct” the voter roll revision exercise.

“There is no need for political leaders to spread false information with respect to the SIR exercise being conducted by EC at the national level,” the poll body said, adding that exact figures about voters who have permanently shifted from Bihar to other states can only be known after a similar exercise is conducted there.

Earlier, leaders of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the ruling party in Tamil Nadu, had accused the poll panel of “attempting to reshape the political demographics of the state”, reported The Indian Express.

“This is a problem in Tamil Nadu as they [migrants] came to work here as guest workers,” party general secretary Duraimurugan was quoted as saying by the newspaper. “But giving them voter IDs will result in political change in the future. If such attempts are made, we will become roaring lions to oppose it.”

The draft electoral roll in Bihar was published on Friday as part of the special revision of the electoral rolls in the state, which was announced by the Election Commission on June 24.

As part of the exercise, persons whose names were not on the 2003 voter list will need to submit proof of eligibility to vote. This means that 2.9 crore out of the state’s 7.8 crore voters – or about 37% of the electors – will have to submit documentary evidence.

Voters born before July 1, 1987, must show proof of their date and place of birth, while those born between July 1, 1987, and December 2, 2004, must also submit documents establishing the date and place of birth of one of their parents. Those born after December 2, 2004, will need proof of date of birth for themselves and both parents.

The draft voter list published on Friday comprises electors who submitted their enumeration forms to the poll panel between June 24 and July 26. They will now have to produce proof of citizenship to make it to the final list that will be published on September 30.

With the publication of the list, electors have a month to raise claims and objections, during which eligible voters can be added and ineligible names excluded. During this period, voters who believe their names were wrongly deleted can approach the relevant authorities for redressal.

Exclusions higher among women, Muslim-dominated districts

A Scroll analysis of the data published by the Election Commission on Friday showed that women made up 55% of voters who were excluded from Bihar’s draft voter list after the revision.

It also showed that five of the state’s 10 districts with the largest share of Muslim population had the highest number of excluded voters.

At 15.1%, Gopalganj district in western Bihar saw the highest rate of exclusion in the state. The voter list in the district’s Gopalganj Assembly constituency shrunk by 18.25% – also the highest in the state.

The draft roll also removed nearly 65.6 lakh voters. Of them, 22.3 lakh were dead, 36.3 lakh had permanently moved or were absent, and 7 lakh were enrolled in multiple places, the Election Commission said.

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Highest exclusion in Bihar draft roll: Women, Muslim-dominant districts