Bihar draft rolls: ‘Husband Husband’, ‘father voter ID card’ instead of names, EC takes action after errors flagged

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For example, in one booth in Chapra, a 22-year-old woman elector’s father’s name was mentioned as “father father”; husbands of two women were mentioned as “husband husband”; a 21-year-old woman’s father’s name was shown as “father’s voter ID card”, and a 19-year-old woman’s mother’s name was listed as “Election Commission of India”.

Saran District Magistrate Aman Samir, who is also the District Election Officer, said in a statement on Sunday that an inquiry has been initiated and action would be taken against the BLO in-charge at the time and the new BLO as well.

Samir said that four names, with the errors, had been in the rolls before the SIR and that Form-8 — for making corrections to entries on rolls — were also processed. The names were added using the BLO app sometime between January 2025 and March 2025, the DM said.

Electors and political parties can file claims and objections from August 1 to September 1, either to include or remove a name from draft rolls. As of 3 pm Sunday, the EC statement said that 941 claims and objections have been filed by electors, while nothing has been filed by the Booth Level Agents (BLAs) of national or state parties.

As per the EC’s order on June 24, all 7.89 crore Bihar electors were required to fill the enumeration forms by July 25, to be included in the draft rolls. After the month-long exercise, a total of 7.24 crore electors were included, while 65 lakh removed since the EC found that some were dead, others had permanently shifted, enrolled in multiple places or untraceable. The final roll will be published on September 30.

Those who registered after January 1, 2003, when the last intensive revision was conducted, are required to submit documents establishing their eligibility, which includes citizenship, by September 1.