Bihar voter roll revision: 65 lakh names deleted before an election

What happened

On 24 June 2025, the Election Commission of India notified a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of Bihar’s electoral rolls, months ahead of the state’s assembly election — the first exercise of its kind in decades. All of the state’s roughly 7.9 crore electors were required to submit enumeration forms, with many asked for documents from a restricted list to establish eligibility. The draft roll published on 1 August 2025 excluded about 65 lakh names. The Commission attributed the deletions to electors found dead (22.3 lakh), permanently shifted (36.2 lakh), or enrolled in duplicate (about 7 lakh).

What the official record shows

Petitions by the Association for Democratic Reforms, opposition parties and civil-society groups argued before the Supreme Court that the exercise was arbitrary, shifted the burden of proof onto voters, and risked disenfranchising large numbers of genuine electors — particularly the poor and migrant workers — without due process. Opposition parties campaigned against the revision, alleging politically motivated deletions; the Chief Election Commissioner publicly rejected those allegations and defended the exercise as roll hygiene. In interim orders, the Supreme Court directed the Commission to publish district- and booth-wise searchable lists of every deleted elector with the reason for deletion, and pressed it to accept Aadhaar as an identity document for reinclusion claims.

Where it stands

The final roll was published and the Bihar assembly election was held in November 2025. The constitutional challenges to the SIR — and to its proposed extension to other states — remain pending before the Supreme Court, which is why this entry is labelled under investigation rather than adjudicated. The scale of pre-election deletions, the litigation record, and the Commission’s stated justifications are all part of the public record.