Bihar’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls is like a bank extinguishing your account and then demanding you prove it existed in the first place. Only, it is not happening at the bank, but at the ballot.

In June, the Election Commission of India (ECI) rolled out the SIR to “purify” the voter list by requiring those whose names were missing from the 2003 rolls to prove their citizenship. Aadhaar and Voter IDs, issued by the State itself, were not accepted as proof. Over 65 lakh voters were struck off the rolls, many without adequate notice, explanation, or opportunity to respond.

That’s roughly 8% of Bihar’s electorate erased, just months before the 2025 Assembly elections. Many are daily-wage workers, migrants, and citizens who were already on the margins of the system. Now, they are outside it.

But remember, we have seen this before. In 1995, a slum dweller in Mumbai named Lal Babu Hussein discovered his name (along with 1.67 lakh others) had quietly vanished from the voter rolls as part of a mass exclusion drive. What began as a personal fight for citizenship exposed a broader pattern of disenfranchisement — and Hussein became the face of a........

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