The Election Commission on Saturday released its first disagreement of controversial voter roll revision exercises of Bihar, revealing that around 200,000 objections have been filed to exclude names, while looking for less than 30,000 applications.
The panel also revealed that for the first time 1.33 million voters have applied for registration from 1 August, which can take the final election rolls beyond the current 72.4 million people released in the first draft.
With only two days remaining before the September 1 time limit for claims and objections, the Commission revealed that 197,000 exclusion requests have been presented against 29,872 inclusion applications since the draft role was published on 1 August.
The previous daily update combined both categories, making it impossible to differentiate between applications to remove names.
The wholesale of potential new registrations comes from 1,330,000 Form -6 applications filed by citizens that recently turned 18, of which more than 61,000 have been processed. Election Registration Officers have settled 33,771 other cases within a compulsory seven -day period.
In addition, the Commission has given notice to approximately 300,000 voters to provide “suspected” details or “insufficient credentials for citizenship”, “potentially growing deletion beyond the 6.5 million names left already left from the draft role.
State Election Department officials said that the maximum notice for ‘suspected voters’ is concentrated in the districts with the migration across the suspected border- Kishunganj, Saharsha, Supaul, West Champaran, Purnia, Katiyar and Madhubani.
All these districts, especially Kishanganj, Katiyar, Purnia and Supaul, also have a large part of the Muslim population.
An election officer, who said that it was asked not to be nominated, only the voters who were detected as “suspected credentials” through the field inquiry report made by the concerned district administration.
Political parties have shown different levels of engagement. CPI (ML) -Liberation has filed 117 exclusion forms and 15 inclusion requests, while Rashtriya Janata Dal has submitted 10 inclusion applications. The ruling NDA parties – including BJP, JD (U) and LJP (RV) – file zero claims.
RJD alleged that when it presents more than 500 applications, only some were accepted due to format requirements. The party has filed a petition of the Supreme Court for the expansion of the deadline, with the prescribed hearing for 1 September.
RJD spokesperson Chittaranjan Gagan said, “The claims/objections filed by our booth-level agents are more than 500, but only a few people are accepting the excuses that it should be in a specific format.”
