The final Electoral list now contains over 7.42 crore voters as against 7.89 crore as on June 24, 2025. In the draft electoral roll as on August 1, 2025, there were 7.24 crore voters after deletion of 65 lakh electorates. In the second phase of the exercise, 3.66 lakh illegal voters were found to have included in the draft roll, which were removed. However, the number of new eligible electorates added to the roll was 21.53 lakhs.

INDIA bloc parties have said that they would be re-evaluating the electoral roll, while BJP and NDA parties have welcomed the publication. All these means that the controversy over SIR over deletion and addition of voters will continue during the forthcoming Bihar Legislative Assembly Election, the dates of which the ECI is getting ready to announce soon, because term of the Bihar Legislative Assembly is to expire on November 22, 2025.

The ECI has said that this large scale exercise was made successful through the sincere efforts of Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Bihar, District Election Officers (DEOs) of all 38 districts, 243 Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) of the constituencies, 2976 Assistant Electoral Officers (AEROs), around 1 lakh Booth Lever Officers (BLOs), lakhs of volunteers and the full involvement of all the 12 major Political Parties, including their district presidents and over 1.6 lakh Booth Level Agents (BLAs) appointed by them.

However, as against the claim of ECI of the exercise being “successful”, “sincerity” of election officers, “full involvement” of all major political parties have emerged as debatable issues. The opposition and independent political parties have just been giving contradictory statements.

For example, the Bihar Congress chief Rajesh Kumar has raised questions about the very SIR exercise, and the manner in which it was conducted. He said, “SIR exercise in Bihar has been under scrutiny regarding questions of fairness and transparency right from the start.” Now when the final list is published, the Congress workers will conduct a thorough evaluation of SIR across the entire state to assess how many names were added and how many were removed. Rajesh Kumar has termed the SIR an unsuccessful exercise, so far as deletion eligible voters and addition of ineligible voters are concerned.

It should be noted that the Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has been running a campaign against such improper addition and deletions of voters which he has termed as “Vote Theft”. He has alleged that Election Commission of India is in hand in glove with PM Narendra Modi in such exercise in favour of the ruling establishment.

INDIA bloc parties have recently campaigned against such improper deletion in Bihar during their a-fortnight-long Voter Adhikar Yatra in Bihar that traveled 1300 km in the state. It is also worth noting that ECI had insisted on not accepting Aadhaar card as sufficient identity proof for the purpose of inclusion in the voter list. Supreme Court of India had to intervene to compel ECI to accept Aadhaar card.

Now when the final electoral roll has been published, it is marked by a large-scale deletions of electorate which has elicited strong protest from the opposition leaders, chiefly from the Congress, RJD, and Left parties, which are part of the opposition INDIA bloc, and which is known as Mahagathbandhan in Bihar led by RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav.

INDIA bloc has reiterated the systemic flaws in the SIR exercise that disproportionately targeted vulnerable groups, especially Dalits, OBCs and Muslims. The leaders of the opposition have claimed that millions of genuine votes still did not find place in the final voter list. They raised concerns about exclusion of migrant voters of Bihar who work outside the state and could not submit forms and documents as desired by ECI.

The opposition has alleged that the objective has been to suppress them in their stronghold, ECI has implemented BJP-backed strategy to delete large number of Dalit, Backward, and minority voters. Muslim voters are sometimes unfairly alleged as illegal Bangladeshi infiltrators.

The political analyst Yogendra Yadav has even questioned ECI over voter list discrepancies. He questioned the very credibility of ECI, and highlighted some of the discrepancies including the number of new voters added and lack of transparency regarding deletion of voters. In a social media post on X he said “As per the ECI, 16.93 lakh Form-6 applications for new voters were received till September 1, and any claims after that were not supposed to be included in the final rolls. Yet, the data shows 21.53 lakh new voters added. How did at least 4.6 lakh names get added after September 1?”

On clarity on voters deletion, Yadav said, “According to ECI, 3.66 lakh voters have been deleted from the draft rolls, but no breakup has been provided. How many of these names were deleted due to lack of eligibility documents? And how many were removed because of Objections?”

The BJP on the other hand questioned the lack of an official complaint by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and his party against the SIR. BJP spokesperson levelled three chief allegation against opposition - no official complaint by Congress, no affidavit on oath by Rahul Gandhi regarding his “allegations”, and spit and run propaganda by Rahul Gandhi.

LJP (RV) leader Chirag Paswan, a leader in NDA, said that the opposition may keep crying hoarse over SIR for next few decades. It should be noted that BJP has been supporting Chirag as against the will of the JD(U) leader and CM Nitish Kumar. JD(U)’s chief spokesperson Neeraj Kumar said that the final is a strong response to the Congress-RJD’s allegation of “vote-theft” in Bihar.

While Congress has vowed to protect voter’s right, RJD spokesperson Shakti Singh Yadav claimed “despite out best efforts, the names of the poor, Dalits, extremely backward and backward classes were not included in the list. We find that at lease 10,000 names were removed in each assembly constituency.” (IPA Service)