Left parties to step up protests against Bihar SIR

The Left parties have decided to step up their protests against the Election Commission’s (EC) Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar. While the CPI(M) said in New Delhi on Saturday (July 19, 2025) that the party will organise nationwide protest against the SIR on August 8, the CPI(ML-Liberation) said its MPs, along with the INDIA Bloc MPs, will raise the matter in Parliament and a delegation of the party’s leaders will meet the Election Commission on July 22.

A statement of the CPI(M) Polit Bureau said the EC wants to extend the SIR exercise to the entire country. “In the name of revising the electoral rolls, the EC is appropriating the authority to verify the citizenship of voters, which is outside its constitutional remit. Under the baseless pretext of weeding out foreigners from the electoral rolls, they are disenfranchising vast sections of minorities and other select groups,” the CPI(M) said.

‘Implementing RSS agenda’

It added that the entire process is fraught with various violations, and even the right to vote guaranteed by the Constitution may be denied to many. “The National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise, which was widely opposed by the people before the Covid pandemic, is sought to be enforced surreptitiously through the back door. The EC, which until now had acted in favour of the BJP-led government, has now become complicit in implementing the RSS/Sangh Parivar agenda, it said adding that the move is an attack on democratic rights.

Meanwhile, addressing a press conference, CPI(ML) general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya told reporters that his party’s delegation will meet the EC on July 22. He said the workers raised the issue of SIR during the July strike in Bihar. He termed the SIR as unconstitutional.

Citing a 2019 answer made in Parliament by the then Law and Justice Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, Mr. Bhattacharya said there were just three complaints of foreigners having voting rights in India then and none of them were from Bihar. Questioning the EC, he said NRC is being implemented in Bihar through SIR, even though the Bihar Assembly had unanimously rejected the NRC earlier. He said there is no provision for a citizenship certificate and the SIR is against the provisions in Constitution. “It is another like the electoral bond,” he said.