A stunning investigation into the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) ‘purified’ voter list for Bihar has revealed significant discrepancies that raise serious questions about the integrity of the electoral process. Across just 15 constituencies, a staggering 67,826 cases of dubious duplicate voters have been identified, each registered with identical credentials. This discovery undermines the ECI’s claims of a cleaned-up voter list, casting doubt on the effectiveness of their efforts to ensure fair elections.
Digging deeper, the investigation found 34,392 of these cases involve voters with completely matching details, each holding two voter IDs. Despite the ECI’s assertion that duplicate entries were removed to produce a reliable draft voter list, these findings suggest otherwise. The persistence of such a large number of duplicate entries across a limited number of constituencies points to potential systemic issues in the voter list purification process.
Read the Investigation:
These revelations come at a critical time as Bihar prepares for the upcoming elections. The presence of duplicate voters could have significant implications, potentially skewing electoral outcomes and eroding public trust in the democratic process. The ECI now faces mounting pressure to address these discrepancies and provide transparency on how such errors occurred under its watch.
But, as we reported yesterday, the ECI has refused to provide its records of deliberation and formulation of the Bihar SIR. We asked it to provide complete details, records and files of how it decided to undertake this unprecedented step. In reply, it sent us a dead link to a nonexistent webpage. Read it here