After the Summary Revision of Electoral Rolls (SIR) process, the Election Commission (EC) of India is set to issue the final voter list in the Bihar Assembly elections on Tuesday. The list will be made constituency-by-constituency, with the latest list of eligible voters in the state. There were 7.89 crore registered voters in Bihar before the SIR process started.
Sir process had started on June 25, where format voter list issued on August 1 contained the 7.24 crore voters and this implied that around 65.63 lakh names were eliminated. After the format list was published the EC made notices to approximately 3 lakh people. In this time 2.17 lakh voters requested their names to be deleted and 16.93 lakh requested to be added to the electoral roll. Of 16.56 lakh more people applied to add their names to Form-6 between August 1 and September 1. During the process of claims and objections, 36,475 applications were gotten in the name addition and 2.17 lakh in deletions.
Applications submitted since September 1 to September 30 are still awaiting processing and the final implementation of such requests will start after October 1, when the SIR process is over. Voter registration has also been made by the EC as a valid document using Aadhaar. Still, people whose names are not at the end of the current list of voters can request to be added up to 10 days prior to the date when nominations of the candidates are to be finished. This will give transparency and inclusivity in voter registration prior to the assembly elections.
The EC has also begun to put final preparations of administrative and logistical preparations in advance of the coming elections. Up until 3:00 pm, today, there will be a video conferencing session with all the 38 district commissioners, IGPs, DIGs etc., in Bihar.