‘Kahal hai ke mar gayeel’: Bihar polling raises questions on SIR and ECI

In a video circulated by the chief electoral officer in Bihar on Thursday, three voters are seen sitting on a bench and replying to questions put to them by an unidentified lady, presumably an official. The identical question-and-answer session went on the following lines:

Please tell us your name (Showkat Ali)

Show us your hand (finger with the ink mark showing that vote had been cast)

Have You voted? (yes, yes)

Did you face any inconvenience? (No, no)

Did you have any trouble voting? (No)

Whatever happened was due to misunderstanding, right? (yes, yes)

Everything is clear now? (Haan)

You are happy now? (yes)

It is fine then

The voters were from Sahebganj constituency in Muzaffarpur. Hours earlier, they were heard complaining that they were turned back from the booth, where they were informed that their votes had already been cast. Hours later, everything appeared to have been sorted out and the media savvy CEO acted promptly to circulate the video of the three satisfied voters.

What remained unclear was whether they were turned away by polling officials or by polling agents of a political party. In either case, the CEO does not appear to have taken any action against the errant officials or agents; or if he had, he was not inclined to share it in the public domain.

The video caught attention because on a day when multiple voters across the state were complaining of not being allowed to vote on the ground that their names were not on the electoral roll, this was a rare instance of the election commission apparently sorting out the issue.

In a village which falls in the Sandesh constituency in Arrah, a group of giggling women told an interviewer, ‘Kahal Hai ki Mar Gayeel’ (we are being told that we are dead). Both men and the women stood together, wondering what to do.

A large number of voters, as anticipated, seemed to have had no clue about SIR (Special Intensive Revision) of electoral rolls conducted between June and September, 2025. Many of them were unaware that they were expected to fill up forms because nobody told them and nobody turned up with the forms. Most of them discovered that they were not on the voters’ list after reaching the booths where they have voted all along.

The polling day was also marked by a full-blown row over three BJP functionaries, former Rajya Sabha MP Rakesh Sinha and two other functionaries in Delhi BJP, Nagendra Kumar and Santosh Ojha. All three had apparently voted in the Delhi assembly election in February this year and were found voting in Bihar also in November.

Most of them had shared their selfies after voting in both Delhi and in Bihar—both in the course of the last nine months—making it easier for fact checkers to expose them.

Professor Rakesh Sinha appeared on TV to explain that he had ‘permanently shifted’ to Bihar and had duly applied to delete his voter registration in Delhi. People were quick to ask how that is even possible since he continued to teach in Delhi University.

The Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar had himself explained that people ordinarily residing in a place must vote there. If someone is working in Delhi but has a house in Patna, he had added, he must register and vote in Delhi and not in Patna.

While it is still unclear whether the BJP functionaries and Prof Sinha have resigned their posts and have stopped working in Delhi, questions are being asked why the much-trumpeted purification of rolls by SIR failed to eliminate these three voters, and possibly many more. During the day, controversy also erupted when it was pointed out that three special trains had left Ambala railway station in Haryana for Bihar, carrying BJP supporters to vote for the party in Bihar.

Haryana chief minister’s alleged statement that he had arranged the trains and paid for them himself, added to the mystery. There were also reports that buses from Maharashtra and Gujarat had also been arranged to send Biharis working there to vote back home. This strengthened the opposition’s allegation that SIR was designed as a selective exercise to disenfranchise opposition supporters.

More details are likely to surface on SIR having disenfranchised citizens in Bihar, muddying the water further.