ECI Receives 28,370 Claims on Bihar Draft Voter List, SC Orders Publication of 65 Lakh Excluded Names

The Election Commission of India has received a total of 28,370 claims and objections regarding the draft voter list following the SIR of the electoral rolls in Bihar and 857 have been disposed of.

The poll panel said that after 15 days of release of draft voter list, no claim or objection has been submitted by any political party

A total of 1,03,703 forms have been received from new electors on attaining 18 years of age or above, including six forms received from BLAs.

As per rules, the claims and objections are to be disposed of by the concerned ERO/AERO after the expiry of seven days after the verification of eligibility documents.

As per SIR orders, no name can be deleted from the draft list published on August 1, 2025, without passing a speaking order by the ERO/AERO after conducting an enquiry and after giving a fair and reasonable opportunity, the press note said.

The ECI published the draft voter list after the SIR exercise in poll-bound Bihar on August 1. The final voter list will be released after the one month given for claims and objections.

Earlier till Thursday, the poll body had 23,557 complaints from the electors, out of which 341 were disposed of. A total of 87,966 forms were received from new electors on attaining 18 years of age or above, including six forms received from BLAS.

The Supreme Court on Thursday asked the Election Commission of India to publish on the district electoral officer’s website the list of approximately 65 lakh persons excluded or deleted from the Bihar draft electoral voters list, along with the reason for their deletion – death, migration or duplication.

A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi also asked ECI to give wide publicity of the same through local newspapers, Doordarshan, radio or any official social media platform.It said a booth-wise list of 65 lakh people shall also be displayed on all the Panchayat Bhawans and the Block development and Panchayat offices so that people have manual access to the list.

This information should also be displayed on the website of the Chief Electoral Officer of Bihar, said the bench in its interim order. The documents should be searchable by EPIC numbers, it was added.The apex court also asked the Election Commission to obtain a compliance report from all the booth-level and district-level officers and file a compliance report by Tuesday.”Aggrieved electors of Bihar whose names were not included could file their objections by applying with a copy of their Aadhaar card,” said the bench to the ECI.

The apex court has posted for hearing on August 22 a batch of petitions challenging the poll panel’s move to conduct SIR of electoral rolls in Bihar. (ANI)

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