New Delhi & Patna, Bihar: In 39 assembly constituencies in Bihar, there exist 1,87,643 cases where people with the exact same name and relative’s name have been registered twice within the same Bihar assembly constituency. 

Of these, in 1.02 lakh cases, the two voter IDs carry the same names and record an age difference of only up to 5 years. In 25,862 cases, people have been registered to vote twice, with all their credentials matching – names, names of relatives, and ages.

The total votes of these dubious cases in the 39 constituencies add up to 3.76 lakhs. If some of these votes are indeed fraudulent, they hold the potential to impact election results in constituencies. 

The ECI has registered these dubious cases on Bihar’s draft voting list after the controversial thirty-day Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Bihar. The ECI had claimed it had removed more than seven lakh duplicates or 0.89 percent electors in Bihar before publishing the draft rolls. These dubious voters still remain on the ECI’s draft list, we found. 

Of these, 16,375 cases raise the highest levels of alarm and should have been easiest for the ECI to detect. In these cases, the duplicates are spitting replicas of each other. Names, relatives’ names, and age match completely, and addresses are the same or merely kilometres apart. 

In our previous report on August 29, we had revealed such dubious duplicates in only 15 assembly constituencies. On August 31, the ECI responded on social media to this report. It did not deny our facts, figures, and assertions. ECI said that our reports were based on data mining. We agree. The Reporters’ Collective and our data analysts, in fact, mimicked the approach that ECI is supposed to follow to deduplicate the voter list on its software called, ERONET 2.0. 

We stand by our previous report, and in this investigation, we go on to analyse 24 more assembly constituencies. We have deepened our line of enquiry while studying voter lists in all 39 constituencies. We further categorised the data for additional parameters to give a more granular picture of the suspect 1.88 lakh voters. 

The Reporter’s Collective examined these draft electoral rolls in collaboration with a team of independent data analysts.

The Commission had blocked the Bihar draft electoral rolls from easy analysis at scale by making them non-machine-readable. Our team of data analysts broke this firewall to detect cases of dubious duplicates existing within one assembly constituency. We specifically looked at suspicious duplicates within constituencies, as these could have been identities and verified on the ground by ECI staff during the enumeration period with relative ease. 

We can’t conclude whether these suspect cases are entirely legacy registrations or if some of them are completely new double voters. That is a question only the ECI, which holds all previous voter records, could answer. 

We further honed in on this dataset to find individuals which are obviously duplicates, or voters double registered within a constituency, something that is illegal according to the Representation of People’s Act.

Cases like Anjali Kumari, who was also cited in our previous report. Hailing from the Treveniganj assembly constituency, Anjali had two voter cards. On both voter cards, her name, her husband’s name, and her address were exactly the same. After we pointed out her two voter IDs, ECI on X said that it is now reviewing her duplicate IDs. Ironically, it admitted to doing so while claiming the Collective’s investigation to be “speculative”. 

In our widened investigation of the draft electoral lists for 39 assembly constituencies, we found 16,375 cases. Where individuals with the exact same voter ID details were registered twice at the same address or in proximate polling booths. 

In 25,862 cases of double voter IDs all the details matched, except for addresses. These are cases of voter duplications that ECI could have easily detected using the software program it deploys to remove voter registrations it defines as ‘demographically similar entries’.

In 1.02 lakh cases, individuals have been registered twice by the ECI with the same name, parents’ name, and near similar ages, within the range of 0-5 years. In these cases, voters with two identity numbers could potentially vote against both voter IDs, as the polling officer would not be able to distinguish by age. For 40,781 cases the recorded ages differed by 6-10 years on the two voter IDs, and in 45,774 cases, the difference in age between the duplicate entries, we detected to be, more than 10 years.

Only the Election Commission of India has the ability to validate these duplications on the ground. Something it already claimed to have done during the special intensive revision. While our sharpened analysis shows thousands of cases of certain matches that ECI has missed but with our limited resources, one colleague from our team travelled to the Jale assembly constituency, in Darbhanga district of Bihar, to ground check the data analysis.

He caught up with Khayyam, a Congress booth-level agent (BLA), who was also recording what he claims to be clear cases of fraudulent duplication on the ground. Khayyam asserted, "At the request of my party's assembly candidate, I discovered at my own and nearby booths that many names are registered with different EPIC numbers. However, when I question people, I don't receive satisfactory answers." Khayyam serves as the BLA for Congress at the Alhoda Academy, Kumhrauli booth in the Jale assembly constituency.

He further claimed, "There are 3 to 4 such names that are also registered at other booths with different EPIC numbers. This is also being confirmed in an EPIC search." The Reporters’ Collective was not able to independently verify these claims.

While the ECI headquarters and its Bihar office has not responded to repeated detailed questionnaires sent before the publication of our previous reports, on August 31, the Bihar Chief Election Officer (CEO) on social media platform X put out a statement. In the statement, the CEO Bihar claimed, “The figure of 67,826 “dubious duplicates” cited in the media report is based on data-mining and subjective matching of name/relative/age combinations. These parameters, without documentary and field verification, cannot conclusively prove duplication.

In Bihar, especially rural constituencies, it is common for multiple individuals to share identical names, parental names, and even similar ages,” he said. His complete statement can be read here.

We sent detailed questions yet again to the ECI before the publication of this investigation. They have yet to reply. 

We asked categorically that does the CEO Bihar believe that the deduplication exercise carried out by the authority during the SIR is sufficient. After concluding the first phase of the SIR and before publishing the draft electoral roll, ECI had released a statement on 27th July claiming that it had removed 7 lakh duplicates from the voter rolls. 

We had previously asked the Commission to furnish details for the deduplication process it followed for the SIR. It did not respond. Before that, under the Right to Information Act, we had asked the ECI to also reveal all records, files, and correspondence on the discussions it held internally or with the Union government to decide upon the SIR. In response, the Commission sent us a dead link to a non-existent page on its website. 

Other Revelations

Our earlier investigation into the Bihar SIR has revealed several other flaws as well. 

Our first report had uncovered more than 5,000 voters simultaneously enrolled in neighbouring UP’s voter list and Bihar’s bordering constituency, Valmikinagar draft electoral roll as well. It can be read here. The ECI, in its statement on August 31, responded to our finding by saying that to consider our investigation relevant, “it must be stated that a detailed report regarding the 5000 persons alleged to be duplicates should be provided.”

In our second investigation, we unearthed that ECI had bundled and registered 80,000 voters on fake and wrong addresses in just 3 constituencies. It can be read here. ECI, in its statement on August 31, did not make any specific statements on this report. 

ECI on our reports on duplications also said that the draft roll is subject to continuous scrutiny, objections, and statutory corrections till the final list is published. It leaves out its own statutory procedures for deduplications even before the final roll is published. In the case for special summary revisions, ECI publicly outlines that it runs the draft electoral roll through its deduplication software in order to weed out possible duplicates before publishing the final roll. 

In August 2023, ECI had also re-emphasised statutory procedures for deduplication again to state election bodies. ECI now claims that voters with duplicate IDs or concerned individuals can file claims and objections to remove duplicates by September 1 - with one more day to go as we write this story. Meanwhile, ECI has given no details on the deduplication method it has followed while deleting 7 lakh duplicate voters in this exercise. 

The Supreme Court is set to hear pleas on September 1 from several political parties and other petitioners to extend the deadline for receiving claims and objections on Bihar’s draft electoral roll. According to ECI’s initial announcement of SIR, the final deadline to file claims and objections on the draft roll is September 1. After ECI’s deadline elapses, and post due verification of these claims and objections, the list will be locked for electors who will vote in the upcoming assembly elections in Bihar.