An investigation by international journalists group The Reporters Collective has revealed that as many as 80,000 voters were registered on fake or wrong addresses in three assembly constituencies in Bihar, where the Election Commission of India (ECI) has recently completed the initial phase of the controversial Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.
The Reporters Collective report released on Sunday revealed as many as 3,590 cases of fraudulent registrations in the Pipra, Bagaha, and Motihari assembly constituencies, according to the draft rolls published by the poll agency on August 1.
Several of these cases pertain to a large group of people being bundled up and registered under a single address, sometimes with non-existent house numbers, otherwise with the names of villages or wards. Notably, some of these voters were registered on their correct addresses in the 2003 electoral rolls, which has now been revised to produce the errors.
"Our investigation has thrown up startling proof of systemic and large-scale flaws in the SIR. The data shows, at least, the ECI’s hastily executed exercise has failed to purge the problems, errors and ghosts from the past voter databases. And, worse, it has potentially filled the database with more," the report said.
A case flagged by the collective involves two adjacent booths in Pipra constituency's Galimpur village, where 459 and 509 individuals were registered to vote under houses numbered 39 and 4, respectively. These individuals belonged to different families, castes and communities.
"How is it that members from the Manjhi-Musahar caste and Brahmin-Baniya caste are living together? This is the mischief of those who fill the names and numbers," one of the 509 voters registered under house number 4 was quoted as saying in the report.
The voter also questioned the "audacity" of the election officials to put the most disadvantaged of Dalit communities, like Manjhi and Musahar, under one roof, with privileged castes like Brahmin and Baniyas, which is far from reality in rural Bihar.
Meanwhile, 459 voters who were registered under their correct addresses in the 2003 electoral roll were found bundled together and registered on a non-existent house number in the newly released draft rolls.
"Twenty-two years later, in the name of creating a ‘clean’ voter list within two months, and with greater use of technology and manpower, the ECI has done worse," the report stated.
"This is important for the door-to-door exercise of verification to serve its purpose. We found that the ECI officials across Bihar have not even followed that system this time around for SIR, making the voter lists, in several cases, even more substandard than the earlier ones," the report said.
In the Bagaha constituency, nine households with over 100 voters were found registered on the same address. One household, the largest, had 248 individuals. Motihari assembly constituency had three cases of 100 or more voters registered under non-existent addresses, the largest being a house where, going by ECI’s new voter list, 294 voters live together.
"Between the Pipra, Motihari, and Bagaha assembly constituencies in the Champaran region of Bihar, there are around ten lakh registered voters. This could mean that approximately eight percent of total voters are registered at dubious addresses," the report stated.
The investigation also revealed that several of the voter details in these constituencies were filled in by the booth officials without their awareness. In some cases, the booth officials just asked for the Aadhaar IDs or a photograph of the voters and then filled in all other details on their own.
The report also claimed that the notional addresses allotted by the EC to people living in rural areas --who might not have house numbers-- were removed from the draft rolls. Notional addresses are also given to homeless people and those living in temporary housing or shelters. The notional number, often prefixed with the letter 'N' is required to be changed only if the individual has moved to a different place with a proper address.
"This is important for the door-to-door exercise of verification to serve its purpose. We found that the ECI officials across Bihar have not even followed that system this time around for SIR, making the voter lists, in several cases, even more substandard than the earlier ones," the report said.
The report further noted that most of these errors occured at the hands of Booth Level Officers (BLO), who had to rush against time and complete the herculean task before a very short deadline. Besides, the BLOs were not briefed on how to solve issues regarding false and wrong addresses, the report claimed.
"Ever since I became a BLO, I have seen many mistakes and got them corrected, but many things were done in a hurry…(For SIR). We had to stay awake all night to upload documents to the Election Commission website. The website did not work during the day. Anyway, no one here has been allotted a separate housing or holding number. Even if it has happened, no one remembers," the report quoted BLO as saying.
The report comes as opposition parties are stepping up their protests against the Bihar SIR while also pushing for a debate on the issue in the Parliament. Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, along with key INDIA bloc members, including RJD leader Tejashwi Prasad Yadav, have launched a 16-day ‘Vote Adhikar Yatra’ from Bihar's Sasaram to protest the exercise.
