Why did the ECI fail to find a single voter to add in Bihar?

Yogendra Yadav told the Supreme Court on 12 August, Tuesday, that the SIR exercise is the first in the history of India where revision has taken place with zero additions to the electoral roll.

"They [ECI] went across the state and did not find a single addition... We are witnessing the largest exercise of disenfranchisement in the history of the world: 65 lakh names deleted. Never in the history of India has it happened. The figure is bound to cross 1 crore," he said, per a Bar & Bench report.

He also turned up in court with 2 voters declared dead by the ECI.

The activist and political commentator, who had helped prepare the arguments presented by the petitioners who have challenged the procedural flaws in the Special Intensive Revision exercise being conducted by the Election Commission of India, was physically present in the court to assist the legal team before seeking the court’s permission to make his submission.

The academic, columnist and activist expressed his gratitude to the Supreme Court bench of Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi for allowing him to make his submission in the court — "that too beyond usual court hours".

About the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, he posted on X and said, “This is not about revision of voter list in one state but about diluting the universality of adult franchise. SIR is a tectonic shift in the architecture of democracy, the largest exercise in disenfranchisement in any democracy.”

"This is the first revision exercise in the whole country where there is zero addition and there are only omissions. The EC officers went from house to house. They did not find one single person who should have been included? This was an exercise of intensive deletion. This is not revision," Yadav said.

He also brought with him two people who had been declared dead by the ECI and removed from the Bihar electoral rolls during the SIR exercise, per after the list published following the first phase on 1 August.

"Please see them. They are declared as dead... But they are alive...see them," he urged the bench, which senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, appearing for the ECI, termed 'drama'.

However, Justice Bagchi responded that Yadav's points were well taken. "May have been an inadvertent error. Can be corrected. But your points are well taken," he said.

However, there are many more eligible voters who have been similarly left out in the state, Yadav alleged.

He also pointed out that the process does not leave sufficient time for appeals against such errors. On 30 September, the list will be frozen, he noted. By the time the appeals are filed, the assembly elections will have been notified. So even candidates could be left out of the lists — and be left with no further recourse. "This is the best way to omit any candidate from the contest too," Yadav warned.

Mass disenfranchisement has already taken place, he argued, with the exclusion of 65 lakh voters. The exclusion is not the failure of the implementation of the SIR but the very design of the process, he claimed.

"With one stroke, the percentage of adults eligible to vote in Bihar has come down to 88 per cent already. There would be further deletions now," he said.

Pointing out that 8 crore 18 lakh is the adult population in Bihar, as projected by the Government of India, he argued that a 'good' electoral roll for Bihar must have 8.18 lakh voters therefore — complete adult franchise. There is already a deficit of 29 lakhs instead, he pointed out.

The SIR exercise should have been to include, not exclude the adult population, he asserted.

There are also concerns, he told the court, around the exclusion of specific socio-economic groups.

Also, the number of deleted women voters are more than the number of deleted men voters — yet the death rate among women is not higher than men; and most migrant workers are men. Therefore, the higher percentage of deletions among women was puzzling, he said.

The election commission’s lawyer Rakesh Dwivedi, predictably, said that the month of August had been designated to correct any mistakes and that Yadav should help the two voters get back on the rolls.

Justice Bagchi added that he believed that those excluded had the opportunity to apply for re-enlisting in the rolls.