Mass disenfranchisement fears in Bihar not misplaced, finds field survey

A rapid survey in eight Bihar districts, among 709 potential voters in 163 households spread across 12 assembly segments and 17 polling booths between 5 and 7 July 2025 has found claims made by the Election Commission of India about the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls to be suspect.

The survey, admits the Bharat Jodo Abhiyaan team, which released its findings, is neither representative nor scientific. Its sample size, for example, was too small to draw definite conclusions. And the discrepancies between claims made by the ECI and the reality on the ground were found to be too glaring to dismiss.

The BJA conceded that its choice of assembly segments and polling booths to survey was determined by the availability of volunteers, with households being selected at random. Even after conceding the probability of a wide margin of error, though, the BJA team pointed out that its survey is more robust than drawing-room speculation or anecdotal evidence being published in newspapers.

The Election Commission on Saturday, 5 July, claimed that it had disbursed enumeration forms to 94 per cent of the voters on the last electoral rolls published in January 2025, which had been scrutinised since then.

The ECI also claimed that more than 36 per cent of them had already filled in the enumeration form and submitted it to the Election Commission officials by 7 July, when the BJA survey concluded. 

The volunteers carried a copy of the latest electoral rolls of 2025 as well as the electoral rolls of 2003 for the relevant booth, downloaded from the Election Commission’s website. They conducted long face-to-face interviews and asked potential voters whether they had been supplied the enumeration forms and whether they had, for each adult member of the household, the documents required for enrolment as per the ECI order.

The tentative conclusions drawn by the team after the short and swift survey are the following:

• Two-thirds of Bihar’s adult population had not received the enumeration forms till the 13th day of the SIR since 25 July.

• Only 36 per cent of the potential voters reported receiving enumeration forms. Since these forms are individualised (with the printed name and photo of the person from the latest ER), not all members of the family receive the forms simultaneously.

• Only 6 per cent of the 709 potential voters surveyed had received two copies of the forms (one to be submitted and another to be retained by the applicant), as required under the SIR guidelines. The remaining 30 per cent were supplied only one copy.

• As many as 37 per cent of all potential voters did not fulfil any condition laid down by the ECI in the SIR: their names did not figure on the 2003 rolls and they did not possess any of the documents required by the ECI.

• This rapid assessment estimate of 37 per cent “ineligible” voters works out to about 2.9 crore potential eligible voters who may be deprived of their right to vote.  

• The proportion of those who may be declared ineligible was found to be staggering — above 60 per cent — among those in the age group 18-40.

The figure may come down if many more people succeed in obtaining fresh certificates in the next fortnight since the exercise ends on 25 July. Or, if the ECI expands, formally or informally, the “indicative (not exhaustive) list of required documents” in its SIR order.

‘The apprehension of mass disenfranchisement is not misplaced’, the BJA survey — conducted under the supervision of Yogendra Yadav, Rahul Shashtri and Kamayani Swami — reports.

Another significant finding of the survey is that marginalised social groups — poor, Dalit, extremely backward communities, Muslims and women cutting across all communities — are disproportionately vulnerable to possible exclusion from the electoral rolls.