EC notices in Bihar trigger questions over voter revision authority

As draft electoral rolls are published across five states and Union Territories under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), a procedural anomaly from Bihar has unsettled sections of the election machinery, raising questions about who is legally authorised to initiate scrutiny of voters.

In the final weeks of Bihar’s SIR in September, Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) across the state found pre-filled notices appearing on their personal log-ins on the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) centralized portal.

The notices — estimated by officials to run into lakhs, though no official figure has been disclosed—were addressed to electors who had already submitted their forms and supporting documents, and whose names featured in the draft rolls published in August.

Crucially, while the notices carried the names of the respective EROs, they had not been generated by them.

This deviation is significant because election law is explicit. Under the Representation of the People Act, 1950, only the ERO of an Assembly constituency is empowered to question an elector’s eligibility and issue a notice calling for a hearing. No other authority is vested with this power.

Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar reiterated this principle at an August 17 press conference, describing electoral revision as a “decentralised construct”. “Neither I nor my fellow Election Commissioners nor any EC official or you can add or delete votes, except for following the legal process,” he said.

Against this statutory backdrop, the Bihar episode raised eyebrows among several EROs, many of whom are learnt to have chosen not to act on the notices.

The anomaly did not result in large-scale deletions. Of the 68.66 lakh deletions recorded during the Bihar revision, official data shows only 9,968 remain unexplained, with the rest attributed to death, migration, duplication or non-availability.

Yet, the episode has sharpened concerns over jurisdiction at a sensitive stage of the revision process—specifically, who is authorised to trigger scrutiny once documents have already been submitted.

Bihar government officials associated with the exercise said on condition of anonymity that the notices began appearing on ERO log-ins in the days leading up to the September 25 deadline for disposal of claims and objections.

The notices were meant to be signed by the ERO or Assistant ERO (AERO) and served on electors through Booth Level Officers (BLOs). Two senior Election Commission officials separately confirmed this sequence.

In Patna and Siwan constituencies, multiple examples of such notices were found. Printed in a uniform Hindi format, they came pre-filled with the elector’s name, EPIC number, Assembly constituency, booth and serial numbers, and address. Each directed the elector to appear before the ERO with documents to establish eligibility.

The notices cited instruction 5(b) of the detailed SIR guidelines issued on June 24, which states that “in case ERO/AERO doubts the eligibility of the proposed elector… he/she will start a suo motu inquiry and issue notice”. However, unlike earlier formats circulated to EROs—which left space for officers to manually record reasons for doubt—these notices arrived fully populated.

They also carried no visible date of issue, though officials said the final eight digits of the serial number indicated the date of generation. All nine notices had a tick against the same reason for doubt: that the submitted documents were “incomplete or deficient”.

Election Commission officials said the notices were generated after identifying “logical errors” or “logical discrepancies” in submitted forms and documents. Electors had been asked to attach documents from a prescribed list of 11, or extracts from the 2003 electoral roll—the last occasion on which an intensive revision was carried out.

Among those who received a notice was RJD MLA Osama Shahab, an elector from Siwan’s Raghunathpur constituency. His name was ultimately retained. His BLO, Jay Shankar Prasad Chaurasiya, described the issue as “technical” and said it was resolved after documents were resubmitted. “None of the notices given to me led to any deletions,” he said.

Another elector from the same booth, Tarik Anwar, said he was unsure why he was summoned despite having submitted documents. “When I went for the hearing, I was told my name was on the rolls,” he said.

In another Siwan booth, a BLO said he received notices for six electors whose documents, including 2003 roll extracts, had already been uploaded. “The notices did not clearly mention the reason. I assumed there was a minor spelling mismatch,” he said, adding that several electors were served notices barely two days before their hearings. None of the names, he said, were deleted when the final rolls were published on September 30.

While the final outcome may not have altered the rolls significantly, the episode has left behind a more enduring question—whether the process itself stayed within the bounds of law at a moment when electoral integrity rests as much on procedure as on outcome.