The deadline for making claims and objections on the draft electoral roll in Bihar passed on Monday. The Bharatiya Janata group (BJP) was the third political group to openly voice its concerns. The CPI(ML) Liberation and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) have done similar things in the past. They are leading the opposition’s fight against claims of “vote theft” and problems with the electoral roll.
As of 10 AM on Monday, the Election Commission of India (ECI) said that they had received 144 claims and objections from booth-level agents (BLAs) of different political parties. Only 25 of these were for adding new, qualified voters, while a large 119 were for leaving out “ineligible” voters.
The BJP filed 16 objections asking for names to be left off, while the CPI(ML) Liberation filed 103. The RJD and CPI(ML) Liberation also asked for the addition of 15 and 10 voters, respectively. The ECI data shows that political parties are more interested in taking names off the lists than adding them.
Most of the accusations and complaints, though, came from regular people. More than 36,474 applications for inclusion were lodged, and about 2.2 lakh (220,000) objections for exclusion were filed. Many of these exclusions were requested by voters who had already filled out enumeration forms while already registered at other places. This is against the law and can lead to up to a year in jail under Section 31 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951.
The ECI also said that more than 16.5 lakh (1.65 million) new voters have applied to register, either when they turned 18 or for the first time, even though they were already eligible. Only a small number, 45 forms, were sent in by party BLAs.
Now that the claims and objections period is over, 243 electoral registration officers (EROs) and 2,976 assistant EROs are in charge of checking everything. They will look over the forms and accompanying papers that were sent in, along with suggestions from booth-level police. According to ECI sources, a lot of voters—almost 4.96 crore (49.6 million)—won’t need to be checked because they were already on the 2003 records. This “all-clear” list will also include kids of people on the 2003 rolls and voters who have filed complaints asking to be taken off the list.
The electoral record is being finalized at the same time as a big political fight in Bihar. The opposition INDIA alliance, lead by Rahul Gandhi of the Congress, just finished its 16-day “Voter Adhikar Yatra” to protest the alleged disenfranchisement of voters during the revision process.