Congress questions Home Minister on ‘Foreigner’ deletions from voter rolls amid Bihar SIR exercise

The ongoing political storm surrounding the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in Bihar intensified on Thursday, with Congress General Secretary Jairam Ramesh posing two direct questions to the Union Home Minister regarding his repeated statements on detecting, deleting, and deporting foreigners on voter lists.

Ramesh took to social media handle X to challenge the Home Minister, seeking clarity about the Constitutional role of the Election Commission of India in determining citizenship and to provide concrete data on ‘foreigners’ removed during the controversial Bihar revision.

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The Congress leader’s questions stem from the Home Minister’s consistent rhetoric during election campaigns, where he often emphasises the need to purge electoral rolls of non-citizens, or “infiltrators.”

In his post, Ramesh directly quoted the Home Minister’s typical election-time assertion, saying, “During election time, the Union Home Minister keeps saying that foreigners who figure on electoral rolls must be detected, deleted, and deported.”
Ramesh then proceeded to ask two pointed questions:
“1. Is it the Constitutional responsibility of the Election Commission of India to determine and decide citizenship?”
“2. How many such foreigners/infiltrators have been detected and deleted as part of the Bihar SIR exercise?”

The SIR of the electoral rolls in Bihar has been a focal point of contention between the opposition and the ECI, particularly in the run-up to the upcoming Assembly elections. The ECI has maintained that the exercise is crucial to “sanitise” the voter lists and ensure only eligible citizens are enrolled.

However, opposition parties, including the Congress, have repeatedly accused the ECI of orchestrating the SIR at the behest of the ruling BJP, calling the poll body the “B-team” of the BJP. They have cited massive discrepancies in the process, including allegations of a large-scale deletion of voters without proper verification, and questioned the timing of the exercise so close to elections.

The opposition has specifically flagged the lack of transparency from the ECI regarding the number of deletions made on the basis of non-citizenship. While the ECI has acknowledged deleting names for reasons including death, being permanently shifted, being untraced, or being a non-citizen, it has often stated that data on non-citizens removed from the rolls is not available at the central level.

The Union Home Minister has previously defended the SIR, stating that it is the ECI’s responsibility to clean up voter rolls and that the exercise is necessary because “infiltrators” have been caught in various regions of the country.

Ramesh’s latest salvo reintroduces the constitutional and factual challenge, directly tying the Home Minister’s political rhetoric to the actual, verifiable outcomes of the ECI’s special revision in Bihar.