An investigation by The Reporters’ Collective revealed that repeated attempts were made by functionaries associated with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to delete nearly 80,000 Muslim voters from the electoral rolls in the Dhaka assembly constituency in Bihar. The final decision on the fate of these voters was expected with the release of the final voter list on October 1, 2025. [1, 2]
Key Findings of the Investigation
- Targeted Deletion: Formal complaints were submitted to the local Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) and the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of Bihar, primarily by the personal assistant of the sitting BJP MLA, Pawan Jaiswal, and another party agent.
- Allegation of Non-Citizenship: The submission to the CEO on the BJP letterhead claimed all 78,384 listed Muslim voters were not Indian citizens.
- ECI Response: The ERO for Dhaka acknowledged receiving the complaint but stated that such bulk deletion requests would not be entertained and the documents of these voters would be verified during the regular verification period of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process.
- Lack of Action: As of the report’s publication, the Election Commission of India (ECI) officials had not taken legal action against those who attempted to manipulate the voter list.
- Voter Anxiety: The investigation found that many of the targeted citizens, some of whom were local officials like sarpanchs and teachers living in the area for generations, were anxious about the potential disenfranchisement. [1, 2, 3, 4]
Aftermath and Latest Updates
- Final List Published: The ECI published the final electoral roll for Bihar on September 30, 2025, ahead of the November Assembly elections.
- Fate of the 80,000 Names: While the ERO initially indicated the names would be verified, subsequent reporting from The Reporters’ Collective suggested the 80,000 voters more or less remained on the rolls, albeit many with existing “botched” or dubious addresses, indicating the SIR process failed to clean up existing errors but also did not result in mass wrongful deletion of this specific group as a result of the BJP complaints.
- Wider Issues: The investigation highlighted systemic flaws in the ECI’s SIR process across Bihar, including over 14 lakh suspect duplicate voters and 1.32 crore voters with dubious addresses in the final list statewide.
- Political and Legal Reaction: The allegations sparked political uproar and led to petitions in the Supreme Court, which directed the ECI to publish details and reasons for all general voter deletions (around 65 lakh statewide) to ensure transparency. Over 170 public figures later rejected the Bihar election results due to alleged manipulation under the SIR process. [2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11]
AI responses may include mistakes.
[1] https://www.reporters-collective.in/team-members/vishnu-narayan
[2] https://www.reporters-collective.in/trc/repeated-attempts-made-to-delete-muslim-voters
[5] https://www.reporters-collective.in/trc/bihar-eci-registered-80k-wrong-addresses-in-3-constituencies
[7] https://www.reporters-collective.in/trc/ecis-final-voter-list-for-bihar