48 lakh people left out of final voters' list; moves underway to speed up elections in Bihar

PATNA: The final electoral roll was published in Bihar on Tuesday after conducting a special intensive revision. According to the official figures of the Election Commission, the total number of voters in the state is 7.42 crore. The draft list published on August 1 had a total of 7.24 crore voters. This list was published after excluding 65 lakh people from the 7.89 crore in June.

65 lakh people were excluded from the June list after a thorough verification. The number of voters in the list, published on August 1, was 7.24 crore. After careful verification, 3.66 lakh more were excluded from this. As part of the subsequent process, 21.53 lakh people were included in the list. In this, new voters were also included after an error was reported in the earlier exclusion.

There is a case pending in the Supreme Court regarding the Special Intensive Revision (SIR). The Supreme Court will hear the cases related to SIR on October 7. The Supreme Court had said that documents, including Aadhaar, should be considered for inclusion of names in the voter list. However, the Election Commission vehemently opposed this.

The Election Commission argued in the Supreme Court that Aadhaar cannot be used as a document for adding names to the voter list. The Supreme Court did not accept this. There is a possibility of announcing elections in the state without waiting for the final verdict in the case. It is reported that officials, including the Chief Election Commissioner, will visit Bihar in the first week of October.