Nearly 14 lakh voters have been added to Bihar’s electoral rolls in the year following the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), which removed millions of names before the November 2025 Assembly election. The increase has brought renewed attention to people who may been wrongly excluded from the rolls and consequently could not vote.
Bihar’s electorate has increased from approximately 7.41 crore in September 2025 to 7.55 crore in October 2026. Around 18.7 lakh applications were received through Form 6, of which nearly 14 lakh resulted in enrolment.
The new additions include first-time voters and people seeking re-registration. However, the available figures do not establish how many of these individuals had previously been registered and were subsequently removed during SIR.
That distinction is important because any eligible voter wrongly excluded from the final electoral roll before the Assembly election would have lost the opportunity to vote in November 2025. Adding their name now would allow them to vote in future elections, but it cannot restore their participation in the election already held.
Nearly 47 lakh fewer voters after SIR
Bihar had around 7.89 crore registered voters when SIR began on June 24, 2025. The draft roll published on August 1 contained approximately 7.24 crore names, a reduction of nearly 65 lakhs.
During the claims and objections period, 21.53 lakh voters were added and another 3.66 lakh names deleted. The final roll published on September 30 contained approximately 7.42 crore voters, nearly 47 lakhs fewer than before the exercise. The November 2025 Assembly election was conducted using the revised electoral rolls. The Supreme Court subsequently recorded these figures in its May 27, 2026 judgment concerning SIR.
The Election Commission maintained that SIR was necessary to remove duplicate entries, deceased voters and people who had permanently shifted, while ensuring that all eligible citizens remained registered.
VFD report questioned large-scale deletions
The latest additions have renewed the relevance of concerns raised by Vote for Democracy (VFD) in its report, The Bihar Verdict 2025: An Audit of the “Stolen Mandate”. The report questioned the scale and pace of deletions, including approximately 21.27 lakh names reportedly removed only between July 21 and July 25, 2025. These included 5.44 lakh voters categorised as deceased and 14.24 lakh as permanently shifted.
VFD also examined constituencies where the number of deleted voters exceeded the winning margin and raised concerns about the verification process. These comparisons raised questions requiring investigation but did not, by themselves, establish that the election results would have been different.
The addition of 14 lakh voters after SIR does not prove that those voters were all wrongly deleted. It does, however, make it important to determine how many were previously registered and how many could not vote in the Assembly election because their names were missing.
ECI orders fresh drive to enrol excluded voters
On September 26, 2026, the Election Commission announced that people left out during SIR could seek inclusion through the continuous updating of electoral rolls. It subsequently ordered a special drive in 20 states and Union Territories where SIR had been completed.
Under the new exercise, Booth Level Officers have been directed to identify eligible voters who remain excluded, compare earlier and revised rolls, visit households and help people submit applications. The drive covers both previously excluded voters and first-time electors.
The Commission has also allowed the regular Form 6 to be used without the additional SIR declaration in states where the revision has been completed. Former Chief Election Commissioner S.Y. Quraishi has questioned why a person whose name was deleted should be treated as a new voter. He has argued that previously registered eligible voters should not have to undergo the same process as first-time applicants.
The revised instructions have therefore raised another question: if earlier electoral rolls can now be used to identify excluded voters, why could this process not have prevented wrongful exclusions before the 2025 election?
Protests spread over voter deletions
The controversy has also led to protests in Bihar and other states. On October 7, Opposition parties organised demonstrations across Bihar against alleged irregularities in SIR and demanded the removal of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. The following day, INDIA bloc parties held a protest march in Patna, demanding fresh Assembly elections and action over alleged wrongful deletions. Protests have also taken place in Delhi and Bengaluru, where political parties, student groups and civil society organisations have questioned the revision process and its impact on eligible voters. The Election Commission and the BJP have denied allegations of wrongdoing.
The Supreme Court’s May 2026 judgment recognised the ECI’s authority to conduct SIR but also provided that eligible voters wrongly deleted on grounds such as death, absence, shifting or duplication could challenge those decisions through judicial review.
What remains unanswered?
The addition of nearly 14 lakh voters is significant, but the overall increase does not establish how many people were wrongly excluded during SIR.
For that, the ECI would need to publish a clear breakdown showing how many newly enrolled voters were first-time applicants, how many had moved from other constituencies, how many were previously registered and how many were deleted during the 2025 revision.
The Commission would also need to identify how many eligible voters remained outside the rolls when the Assembly election took place.
The central issue is the voting opportunity lost in November 2025. If eligible citizens were wrongly excluded, adding their names now may allow them to vote in future elections, but it cannot give them back the vote they were unable to cast in Bihar’s last Assembly election.
Related
SC greenlights SIR, upholds ECI’s power to revise electoral rolls