Congress on Friday hit back at the Election Commission over the claims made by Bihar’s Chief Election Officer (CEO) that no appeals have been received regarding additions or deletions in the electoral rolls saying that instead of making flimsy and moot arguments about not receiving objections, he would do well by considering lakhs of duplicate entries, fake addresses, and non-existent houses flood the lists among others.
Congress media and publicity department chairman Pawan Khera slammed the Bihar CEO after he claimed that during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise in Bihar, with regard to the addition and deletion of names in the electoral list by the Electoral Registration Officer in all 243 assembly constituencies, no appeals have been received before the District Magistrate under Section 24(A) of the Representation of the People Act as of October 9.
Khera, who is also a Congress Working Committee (CWC) member, party’s highest decision making body in a post on X, said, “The CEO of Bihar claims that no appeals have been received regarding additions or deletions in the electoral rolls. But how can appeals be filed when – those whose names were removed are never proactively notified.”
Khera said that the ECI published the names of the earlier 65 lakh deleted voters only after Supreme Court intervention and has yet to release the latest list of deletions.
He cited that “legal aid for filing appeals was provided only yesterday”, following the Supreme Court’s direction.
“Instead of making flimsy and moot arguments about not receiving objections, the CEO would do well by considering the following – lakhs of duplicate entries, fake addresses, and non-existent houses flood the lists.
– In some cases, hundreds of voters – sometimes from different families and communities – are registered at a single address,” he said
He also said that thousands of individuals possess multiple voter IDs, some holding at least three.
“With such glaring anomalies, why is he defending the electoral rolls?” the Congress leader asked
The poll panel earlier in the day said that not a single appeal has been filed before the District Magistrates for seeking redressal of any complaints or ‘discrepancy’ in the final voter list, till October 9.
Bihar’s Chief Electoral Officer, releasing details of all constituencies, stated that zero appeals have been received by respective DMs so far.
The Commission had published the final voters’ list for the Bihar Assembly elections on September 30, with the list comprising 7.42 crore voters as eligible electors, who will be exercising their franchise in the upcoming polls.
The Opposition parties including Congress had slammed the Commission over the SIR process and alleged that names of many valid voters were deleted from the list.
To address this, the panel had mandated that appeals be made to respective District Magistrates in case of any inclusion or deletion of any name, or any discrepancy. However, after nine days, no appeals have been received from any district, the Bihar CEC said on Friday.
The poll body published the final draft voter list on September 30. A total of 7,41,92,357 voters were listed in the final voter list.A
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Zubair Amin is a Senior Journalist at NewsX with over seven years of experience in reporting and editorial work. He has written for leading national and international publications, including Foreign Policy Magazine, Al Jazeera, The Economic Times, The Indian Express, The Wire, Article 14, Mongabay, News9, among others. His primary focus is on international affairs, with a strong interest in US politics and policy. He also writes on West Asia, Indian polity, and constitutional issues. Zubair tweets at zubaiyr.amin
