Repeated attempts were made, allegedly by the BJP, to delete nearly 80,000 Muslim voters from the electoral rolls in the Dhaka constuituency in the East Champaran district of Bihar, an investigation by the Reporters Collective has revealed.
According to the report, the submissions included an official letter from the BJP's state headquarters in Patna, addressed to the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of the state, demanding massive voter deletion targeting Muslims, claiming that they were not Indian citizens.
The investigation found that the initial attempt was made by one Dhiraj Kumar, the saffron party's booth-level agent (BLA) in Dhaka and also the personal assistant of the constituency's BJP MLA, Pawan Kumar Jaiswal.
The initial submissions, seeking the removal of as many as 130 Muslims, were made within a period of thirteen days before the Election Commission of India's (ECI) deadline for submitting amendments to the draft list published after the first phase of the controversial Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar. The submissions, ten each for thirteen days starting on August 19, were made to the district Electoral Registration Officer.
The petitions signed by the BLA on behalf of the party stated, "I hereby declare that the information furnished by me is on the basis of proper verification of the part of the electoral roll given to me and I am aware of the penal provisions of Section 31 of Representation of People’s Act, 1950 for making false declaration.”
However, it did not mention why the party wanted the voters to be deleted from the list, even when the application forms require the BLAs to provide reasons.
The most bizarre submission was made on the last day for the submission of complaints, August 31. The submission, signed by Dhiraj Kumar, sought the removal of 78,384 Muslim voters from Dhaka's electoral rolls. Their names and EPIC numbers were listed systematically in the submission.
The submission said that people who had not existed on the voter list till January 2025 had been put on the SIR draft list without providing the various documentary proofs that the ECI mandated, including their domicile certificates.
Subsequently, an official letter on the letterhead of the BJP state headquarters in Patna was sent to the CEO, seeking the deletion of the same 78,384 Muslim voters, but for a different reason. The letter claimed that the voters were not Indian citizens.
The letter was signed by one 'Lokesh' as Tirhut Pramandal Prabhari, Election Management Department, Bihar.
According to the Reporter's Collective, when contacted, BJP's local leaders denied the existence of a person named Lokesh representing the party. However, the party leaders did not deny the existence of the letter or renounce the applications filed by the BLA.
Moreover, the BJP has so far not distanced itself from the submissions nor filed any police complaint regarding them being forgeries in the party's name.
Massive disenfranchisement
According to the investigation, among the nearly 80,000 voters that the BJP wants removed from the electoral rolls is the entire family of Firoz Alam, the sarpanch of the Fulwaria Gram Panchayat, the village of MLA Pawan Jaiswal.
"My family has lived in this village for several generations. I have contested in the local panchayat elections. How could I have done this if I am not a resident of India? Now, the BJP has shared my name, my wife’s name, and the name of my children, naming them as dubious voters,” Alam was quoted as saying by the Reporters Collective.
In the Chandanbara village with a majority Mulsim population, the 5000 voters named in the BJP's complaint include booth-level officers, school teachers, and booth-level agents.
With a substantive Muslim-Yadav population, Dhaka, a constituency in the Indo-Nepal border, has historically been a stronghold of the Congress and later the RJD.
Notably, the BJP wrested the Dhaka seat from the RJD in the 2020 Assembly elections by a margin of 10,114 votes against the total 2.08 lakh votes polled. Now the BJP has allegedly made attempts to remove 40% of the voters in the constituency, which could have a significant impact on the upcoming elections.
The revelations come at a time when the ECI is facing flak from the opposition parties for the lack of transparency in the SIR exercise. The opposition parties have stated that the exercise, conducted in a hurried manner just ahead of the Assembly elections in Bihar, is intended to disenfranchise a large population in favour of the BJP-led NDA alliance.