The Special Intensive Revision (SIR), announced on June 24, 2025, aimed to update and purify Bihar’s voter list ahead of the State’s assembly elections scheduled for later this year. This exercise, the first-of-its-kind in Bihar since 2003, has been praised for its intent to ensure electoral integrity.

It is a specialised effort by the ECI to revise electoral rolls to ensure that only eligible citizens are included while removing ineligible entries, such as those of deceased individuals, duplicates or non-residents. In Bihar, the ECI justified the 2025 SIR by citing factors such as frequent migration, underreporting of deaths and the potential inclusion of ineligible voters, including non-citizens. The exercise was conducted under the ECI’s constitutional authority as per Article 324 of the Indian Constitution and Section 21 of the Representation of the People Act (RPA), 1950-51.

The SIR aimed to achieve three primary objectives:

(1) Inclusion of eligible voters by ensuring that every eligible citizen above 18 years, ordinarily resident in Bihar, is enrolled.

(2) Exclusion of ineligible voters by removing names of those who are deceased, have permanently shifted, or are non-citizens, as per Section 16 of the RPA.

(3) Electoral Integrity by maintaining the accuracy and transparency of the electoral roll to support free and fair elections. The process involved house-to-house verification by Booth Level Officers (BLOs), submission of enumeration forms by voters and verification of documents for electors registered after 2003. The draft electoral roll was published on August 1, 2025, with the final roll scheduled for later by the end of September 2025, after addressing claims and objections.

The SIR in Bihar was structured in multiple phases including a 31-day window for training BLOs and restructuring polling stations.

Voters were required to submit enumeration forms, with those registered before 2003 exempted from providing additional documents, while post-2003 registrants needed to submit one of the 11 specified documents to prove their date and place of birth. These documents included among other things, government-issued IDs, birth certificates, passports and caste certificates. On August 1, 2025, the ECI published the draft electoral roll, which excluded approximately 65 lakh voters marked as Absentee, Shifted, or Dead (ASD).From August 1 to September 1, 2025, excluded voters were given time to file claims for inclusion, supported by documents, including Aadhaar, as mandated by the Supreme Court.

The ECI was tasked with resolving claims and objections by September 30, 2025, to finalise the electoral roll.

The ECI has done an excellent job reporting high participation, with 91.69% of voters submitting enumeration forms, with the process being transparent, involving booth-level officers and political party agents. However, the 97-day schedule for the SIR, compared to the longer 2002-03 revision, was deemed insufficient for a State with almost 8 crore voters, by the likes of Yogendra Yadav, who described the SIR as a “disenfranchisement exercise". But are Yadav’s allegations justified? No. He is not a Psephologist nor is he a neutral political analyst. Yogendra Yadav belongs to that disgruntled lot that has been rendered completely futile and........

© News18