ECI Plans House-to-House Voter Verification Ahead of Bihar Assembly Polls

New Delhi:In the wake of oft-erupting controversies relating to electoral rolls the Election Commission of India (ECI) is contemplating intensive house-to-house verification of voters during the revision of electoral rolls for the upcoming Bihar assembly polls.

This comes in the backdrop of allegations leveled by Leader of Opposition Mr Rahul Gandhi who questioned the transparency and neutrality of the ECI during the Maharashtra assembly elections of 2024, fearing that the upcoming Bihar state polls too may go through the same pattern of institutional “rigging” as of Maharashtra. Mr Gandhi had raised several issues pertaining to Maharashtra assembly elections and accused the ECI of “match-fixing.” He alleged that the voter list was inflated with fake voters which actually swung the results during the closing hours of polling which also led to inflated voter turnout data. He challenged the ECI to come out clean and release CCTV footage of the Maharashtra polling stations. Besides, he questioned the appointment of Chief Election Commissioners and other ECs and talked about the duplicate EPICs.

Sources in ECI said sanguine about its responsibility, the poll body has repeatedly emphasised that it is committed to ensuring that only genuine and eligible citizens are enrolled in the electoral rolls.

“Regular exercise of revision of the Electoral Rolls is undertaken annually throughout the country by the ECI and also before the holding of Elections/Bye-polls by ECI.

Constitutional and legal frameworks are also quite clear and robust in this regard. The provisions regarding eligibility to be registered as a voter and disqualifications for registration in an electoral roll are clearly laid down in Article 326 of the Constitution of India and Section 16 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, respectively,” sources said.

Need for constant updation of the Electoral Rolls arises due to reasons such as migration or shifting of electors, addition, addition of names of young electors attaining the age of 18 years, deletion due to death or migration, corrections in elector details such as names, photographs, address etc, rationalisation of polling stations for various reasons, especially in view of the new limit set by the ECI of 1200 electors per polling station from the earlier 1500, and identification and subsequent deletion names of foreign illegal immigrants in the electoral rolls.

During 2024 as per forms received by the ECI, 46.26 lakh persons shifted their residence, 2.32 crore applied for corrections and 33.16 lakh requested for replacement. Thus, in a single year, nearly 3.15 crore changes were required to be made across the country.

The entire process of updation of the electoral rolls is conducted as per the law, rules and instructions of the ECI and sufficient opportunity is provided to the political parties to file claims, objections and appeals before the final electoral roll is published, sources added.

“However, in spite of following a detailed protocol, insinuations and allegations are often made against the ECI for arbitrarily inflating the electoral roll, even though, the exercise is conducted with complete transparency and under constant scrutiny of the political parties. Thus, in order to make the system completely robust and free of any kind of errors, ECI is contemplating an intensive house-to-house verification during the upcoming electoral roll revision before Bihar Assembly Polls to purify the Electoral Rolls. Such intensive and rigorous revision of the electoral rolls has been done in the past as well. The last such exercise was undertaken in the year 2004,” ECI sources said.