Political tensions are rising in Bihar over the Election Commission’s extensive voter list revision. Opposition leaders have alleged that the Commission is employing a partisan and misleading strategy, pointing to the absence of a pre-campaign meeting with all parties.
File Photo: IANS
Political tensions are rising in Bihar over the Election Commission’s extensive voter list revision. Opposition leaders have alleged that the Commission is employing a partisan and misleading strategy, pointing to the absence of a pre-campaign meeting with all parties. This comprises the entire process’s transparency and neutrality, they argued.
Addressing a press conference in Patna on Tuesday, Leader of Opposition in Bihar Assembly Tejashwi Prasad Yadav stated that they’ve repeatedly brought up the voter revision drive with the Election Commission and requested a meeting, but the Commission hasn’t scheduled one yet.
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He said: “Despite our repeated requests for an all-party meeting, the Election Commission has remained unresponsive and dismissive. They’ve ignored our requests for a meeting, and their reasoning for a review is unconvincing and casts doubt on their intentions.”
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The RJD leader said that to determine the voters’ eligibility the government has asked for 11 documents like birth certificates, proof of address, caste certificates, school certificates, family records, and land deeds.
He said: “The Election Commission and the central government must spell out exactly how many people have any of those 11 documents that they have asked for. They should also clarify what kind of documents they are expecting from the nearly 94 lakh families living below the poverty line in Bihar.”
Bihar Congress president Rajesh Ram denounced the central government as illegitimate. He argued that the Modi government was elected in 2024 by the same voters who are being asked to prove their eligibility.
He accused the central government of manipulating agencies to remove voters based solely on their surnames, suggesting a malicious intent from both the central government and the Nitish Kumar government.
CPI-ML General Secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya stated that it’s deceptive to suggest that individuals listed in the 2003 voter list are exempted from providing their parents’ birth certificates. He emphasised that the core problem lies not in the quantity of people affected, but in the problematic procedure itself and its potentially severe repercussions.
He said: “The Election Commission is trying to reassure people by saying that 4.96 crore voters won’t need to show documents. But what about the roughly 3 crore voters, mostly poor, Dalit, OBC, and labourers, who don’t have the required papers? Many could be struck from the voter list under this pretense.”
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