As notices start going out on Tuesday to electors with the publication of draft rolls in 5 states and UTs below the Particular Intensive Revision (SIR), a procedural purple flag from Bihar has set off concern throughout the election equipment.
Within the closing fortnight of the Bihar SIR in September, The Indian Specific has learnt, Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) throughout the state discovered “pre-filled notices” showing on their particular person log-ins on the Election Fee of India’s (ECI) centralised portal. These notices, estimated to be in lakhs however no quantity has been supplied by the EC, had been addressed to Bihar electors who had already submitted their types and supporting paperwork and whose names figured within the draft rolls revealed in August.
Considerably, whereas the notices bore the names of the EROs, that they had not been generated by them.
This departure issues as a result of the regulation is obvious. Below the Illustration of the Individuals Act, 1950, it’s the ERO of the Meeting constituency, and solely the ERO, who’s empowered to doubt an elector’s eligibility and concern a discover calling for a listening to.
Certainly, Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar has additionally underlined this precept. At an August 17 press convention, describing electoral revision as a “decentralised assemble”, Kumar stated: “Neither I nor my fellow Election Commissioners nor any EC official or you possibly can add or delete votes, apart from following the authorized course of.”
It’s in opposition to this statutory and institutional backdrop that the Bihar episode raised eyebrows amongst a number of EROs, a lot of whom are learnt to have chosen to not act on or pursue the notices.
A pre-filled discover issued by central EC in bIhar.
This episode didn’t translate into mass deletions. In line with official information, of the 68.66 lakh deletions recorded in the course of the Bihar revision, solely 9,968 stay unexplained; the remaining had been attributed to demise, migration, duplication or absence. But the way wherein the notices had been generated and routed has raised questions on jurisdiction at a delicate stage of the revision course of: who’s authorised to provoke scrutiny as soon as paperwork have been submitted.
5 Bihar authorities officers concerned within the train instructed The Indian Specific, on situation of anonymity, that the notices started showing on ERO log-ins within the days main as much as the September 25 deadline for disposal of claims and objections. The notices had been meant to be signed by the ERO or Assistant ERO (AERO) after which delivered to electors via Sales space Degree Officers (BLOs). Two senior Election Fee officers individually confirmed this sequence.
The Indian Specific travelled to many constituencies in Patna and Siwan to search out a number of examples of such pre-filled notices. In a uniform, pre-filled Hindi format, they carry the elector’s identify, EPIC quantity, Meeting constituency, sales space quantity, serial quantity and handle. Every discover asks the elector to look earlier than the ERO with paperwork to ascertain eligibility.
Course of is downside
The Bihar notices, pre-filled and despatched by EC, could not level to substantive wrongdoing. However they flag a procedural query on the coronary heart of electoral integrity: when the regulation assigns duty to a neighborhood statutory authority, central interventions can unsettle the chain of accountability.
The notices cite instruction 5(b) of the detailed SIR tips issued on June 24, which states that “in case ERO/AERO doubts the eligibility of the proposed elector… he/she is going to begin a suo motu inquiry and concern discover.” Nevertheless, in contrast to an earlier discover format circulated to EROs, which left clean columns for officers to report causes in their very own hand, these notices arrived pre-populated.
Additionally they carry no seen date of concern, although officers say the final eight digits of the serial quantity replicate the date of technology. For example, “13092025” signifies September 13, 2025. All 9 notices reviewed had a printed tick in opposition to the identical second motive for doubt: that the paperwork submitted had been “incomplete or poor”.
The Indian Specific despatched an in depth questionnaire on December 12 to the Election Fee however no response was acquired. The Bihar Chief Electoral Officer was unavailable for remark.
EC officers stated the notices had been generated after figuring out “logical errors” or “logical discrepancies” in submitted types and paperwork. Electors had been requested to connect paperwork from a prescribed checklist of 11, or extracts from the 2003 electoral roll, the final time an intensive revision was performed.
Amongst those that acquired a discover was RJD MLA Osama Shahab, an elector in Siwan’s Raghunathpur. His identify was ultimately retained. His BLO, Jay Shankar Prasad Chaurasiya, stated the difficulty was “technical” and resolved after paperwork had been resubmitted. “Not one of the notices given to me led to any deletions,” he stated.
One other elector from the identical sales space, Tarik Anwar, stated he was uncertain why he was known as regardless of having submitted paperwork. “Once I went for the listening to, I used to be instructed my identify was on the rolls,” he stated.
In one other Siwan sales space, a BLO stated he was given notices for six electors although their paperwork, together with 2003 extracts, had already been uploaded. “The notices didn’t clearly point out the rationale. I assumed there was a minor spelling mismatch,” he stated, including that a number of electors acquired notices barely two days earlier than the scheduled listening to. Finally, he stated none of these names had been deleted when the ultimate roll was revealed on September 30.
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