Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Dnyanesh Kumar said on Monday that the Election Commission of India (ECI) has decided to conduct special intensive revision (SIR) of voter lists across the country after the announcement of the Bihar assembly election program. The 243 assembly seats of Bihar will be held in two phases on November 6 and 11 November, while the counting of votes will be held on 14 November. Addressing the press conference, the Chief Election Commissioner said, “ECI has already decided to get SIR across the country.”
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Earlier, in its order on 24 June, the Election Commission had said that SIR would be conducted across the country. Reacting to the SIR process in Bihar, the Chief Election Commissioner said that the voters of Bihar have fully participated in the purification of the voter list in the state. The Chief Election Commissioner said, “The final voter list after SIR has been given to all political parties. After the date of filing nomination, the voter list to be issued will be final. The voters of Bihar participated fully in the purification of the voter list in the state.”
Gyanesh Kumar said that SIR, (in Bihar) this was done in a transparent manner. The Supreme Court has directed to include the Aadhaar card as a 12th document as evidence of identity, but it will not act as evidence of citizenship. Section 9 of the Aadhaar Act states that the Aadhaar card is neither proof of citizenship nor residence. Prior to 2023, several decisions of the Supreme Court stated that Aadhaar is not proof of date of birth. According to the decisions and Aadhaar Act of the Supreme Court, the Aadhaar card is the only proof of identity. According to Article 326 of the Constitution, the age of the voter should be at least 18 years, he should be a citizen of the country and a resident of the respective polling station. The Election Commission has followed the directions of the Supreme Court.
The Election Commissioner said that many things were said about this on social media, but the truth is that only political parties had demanded it. He said that the Election Commission is a constitutional institution and it holds the national and state assembly elections under the purview of the Constitution. Earlier, on 5 October, Chief Election Commissioner Kumar defeated the Election Commission’s decision to revise the voter list before the Bihar assembly elections. He had said that any suggestion of amending after the election is “unfair”. The Chief Election Commissioner clarified that SIR is both legal and mandatory under the Representation of the Representation of the Public Representation Act. He said that in relation to the decision to make special intensive revision before the election, if you run according to the Representation of the Public Representation Act, then it is legal for the Election Commission to revise before every election and it is necessary to do so under the law. Somebody’s saying that it should be reviewed after the election is unfair.
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Meanwhile, the Election Commission also published the final voter list for the Bihar Assembly elections after the completion of the special intensive revision (SIR). The total number of voters in the final list is 7.42 crore, while the total number of voters was 7.89 crore till 24 June this year. A press release by the Election Commission said that 65 lakh voters have been removed from the draft list and by August 1, 2025, the number of voters in the draft list has increased to 7.24 crores. It said that the number of ineligible voters removed from the draft list is 3.66 lakhs, while 21.53 lakh eligible voters have been added to the draft list (Form 6), which has increased the total number of voters to 7.42 crores.