Hello,
The deeper one digs, the more one can find the extent of mismanagement in the Election Commission of India’s hurriedly prepared draft voter list for Bihar. The poll body may have considered “Special Intensive Revision” to be a monumental step, but thanks to the poor foundation on which it was built, the blocks are crumbling down.
We continue to dig deeper into the mess. Our latest investigation builds on our earlier stories and detects more than 5.56 lakh suspect duplicates in 142 constituencies, which is close to 60 percent of Bihar’s total 243 assembly constituencies.
We have limited resources, but even with those, our correspondents on the ground conducted ground verification of the data. In two constituencies, their work revealed hundreds of duplicate Voter IDs with matching photos.
The Election Commission has repeatedly dismissed investigations by The Reporters’ Collective and by several other organisations. It has dismissed detection of suspect duplicates, claiming many people in Bihar share common names, and so do their relatives. The ground check could definitely reveal some cases of similar-looking voter cards belonging to two distinct people. We found those during our ground verification too, but it still can’t hide the massive shortcomings in the purified draft voter list.
Read the investigation: Photo-Matched Duplicates Abound on ECI’s Draft Voter List of Bihar
You can read all of it here, in our Electoral Roll Project.
We are a small but determined newsroom with limited resources. We have been trying to cover the issues in the ECI’s SIR exercise in Bihar for the past several weeks, and we will continue to do so.
Despite stretched resources, our team has consistently sought accountability from those in authority, whether it is the ECI, the government, or any corporations. We will continue to do so. You can support us in this journey.
Warm Regards,
Mayank Aggarwal
Editor, The Reporters’ Collective