Did ECI miss Bihar's dead and ‘permanently shifted’ voters in Jan?

Even as the Election Commission of India (ECI) has uploaded the list of 65 lakh Bihar voters dropped from the draft electoral list released on 1 August, number crunchers are finding it difficult to track trends. One such analyst explains that the format in which the booth-wise names have been shared by the ECI makes any analysis time-consuming and cumbersome. Tracing trends is therefore taking time, he explained.

However, an analysis published in the Indian Express of names dropped in just three of the 38 districts of the state, namely Patna, Madhubani and East Champaran, shows some interesting trends. The three districts together account for 36 Assembly seats, 22 of which were won by the NDA in 2020. These three districts also happen to have recorded the most deletions.

1. 10.63 lakh voters (16.5 per cent of the 65-lakh dropped) have been dropped from the lists in these three districts

2. Permanently shifted (36.74 per cent), deceased (32.23 p.c.), absent (21.2 p.c.) and already enrolled (9.8 p.c.) were the reasons cited for deletion

3. The analysis shows that more women (53.35 per cent) have been deleted from the rolls than men

4. In as many as 25 of the 36 Assembly segments in these three districts, the percentage of deletions exceeds the winning margin in 2020 when the last Assembly election was held. NDA won 18 of these 25 seats, while in the three districts as a whole, NDA won 22 of 36 seats

5. 37.87 per cent of the deleted voters in these three districts happen to be below the age of 40. Those who were aged 40 and above in 2003, according to the SIR, were required to merely prove that they were on the electoral list in 2003. Those below the age of 40 in 2025 and who were on the electoral roll in June 2025 were required to submit one of the 11 documents sought by SIR.

As per the ECI's own declaration, the final voter list for Bihar was published on 7 January this year. All the above data has emerged in the seven months since then.