PUCL Bihar Questions Procedure, Credibility of Entire SIR Process

Patna: Amid Opposition allegations and protest against the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise of the Election Commission of India (ECI) in poll-bound Bihar, the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) Bihar has come out with startling findings about it.

After the much-publicised draft of electoral rolls released by the ECI on August 1, following the completion of the first phase of its SIR exercise in July 2025, PUCL conducted an investigation on the ground.

The investigation report of PUCL Bihar is based on a household survey that highlighted the fact that of the 262 eligible voters surveyed, in the case of 17% (45 voters), though their names appear in the draft list on the ECI website, they have been asked to contact their BLO (Block Level Officer) and submit documents.

“Upon our enquiry, they told us they had submitted the required documents along with the form. In 8% of cases (21 voters), despite filling the form and submitting the required documents, the names of eligible voters have been deleted, and they were asked to contact their BLO and proceed to fill out Form 6,” said the PUCL report.

"The findings of our investigation are startling and put a serious question mark over the procedure and credibility of the entire SIR exercise", the report added.

According to PUCL Bihar, four persons whose names were found in the draft roll are dead. In the case of one person, his name appeared twice in the draft roll. “The respondents also told us that the BLOs did not visit them at their residence to verify their status. Thus, the electoral roll was error-free only in 73 per cent of cases, 191 voters. The margin of error in our investigation was a whopping 27 per cent, more than one quarter of voters”, said PUCL, which submitted the complete list of such 71 cases to the Chief Electoral Officer’s office on the August7, 2025 through a memorandum.

It further said that numbers apart, the most worrying fact emerging from the investigation was that those eligible voters, who were required to submit their documents and whose names had been deleted and asked to fill form 6, did not know their voter status until the PUCL informed them.

“No BLO or any other official of the ECI had contacted them. Thus, the burden of checking their voter status has been completely shifted to the voters”, it said, adding that “another worrying aspect of our investigation is that, from the information available on the ECI website, it is not at all possible to know how many people could not submit their form either because they were not contacted or they were not in a position to submit any document or who were temporarily out of their residence during the SIR for any reason. We are completely in the dark about their numbers. This can further raise the proportion of eligible voters at serious risk of losing their voting rights, which can cross over 10 million.”

The PUCL report further said, "The evidences collected from the field point out serious problems with the SIR due to a host of factors, most importantly the requirement of documents that are not easily available with a substantial section of voters, an impractical timeframe, non-verification of the eligible voters at voters’ residence, and the arbitrary powers vested in the BLOs, AEROs and EROs. PUCL demands that the SIR must be stopped, its constitutionality examined by a constitutional bench of the Supreme Court, and the coming Bihar Assembly elections conducted based on the final electoral roll published by the ECI on the January 7, 2025, based on the Summary Revision of electoral rolls".

 PUCL Bihar, with the support of Democratic Charkha and Samar Youths, said it conducted an investigation of the draft electoral rolls. A household survey was conducted in three slums of Kanhaiya Nagar and Isopur (both under Phulwarisharif Assembly Constituency) and Sabri Nagar (under Danapur Assembly Constituency). A team from the three organisations randomly picked up 262 EPIC numbers and visited their households between August 1 and 5, 2025. Their status was checked on the ECI website by using their EPIC numbers.