The Congress on Sunday claimed that a bulk of the 23 lakh women voters, excluded from Bihar’s final electoral roll published by the Election Commission on September 30, were in 60 Assembly constituencies that saw a close contest in the 2020 elections.

“Looking at the data from the 2020 Assembly elections, the INDIA bloc had won 25 seats here, while the National Democratic Alliance bagged 34 and a close contest was witnessed,” said Alka Lamba, president of the All India Mahila Congress.

The six districts where the 60 seats fall are Gopalganj, Saran, Begusarai, Samastipur, Bhojpur and Purnea.

Lamba alleged that the Election Commission had “engaged in massive fraud on these very seats” in the name of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls.

The revision of the electoral rolls in Bihar was announced by the Election Commission on June 24.

As part of the exercise, persons whose names were not on the 2003 voter list needed to submit proof of eligibility to vote.

The draft rolls were published on August 1 and kept open for “claims and objections” by individuals and political parties until September 1.

As many as 7.2 crore electors were listed in the draft rolls, while 65.6 lakh names were removed from it.

Of these, 22 lakh were due to deaths, 36 lakh were of persons who had permanently shifted or were untraceable and seven lakh were duplicate entries, the Election Commission had said at the time.

In the final list, which is available on the poll panel’s website, at least 47 lakh voters were excluded from the electoral rolls.

On Sunday, the Congress alleged that the Election Commission had “deliberately targeted” Dalit and Muslim voters.

Questioning the logic of removing the voters’ names at this stage, Lamba asked: “When these same women had cast their votes in the Lok Sabha elections last year, were those votes also fake at that time?”

She added that on October 15, the Congress will submit five crore signatures to the poll panel against the alleged vote theft in the country.

The Election Commission has defended the voter roll revision as a clean-up exercise to remove names of the deceased, duplicate entries and undocumented migrants ahead of the elections.

A Scroll analysis of the data published by the Election Commission on August 1 showed that women made up 55% of voters who were excluded from Bihar’s draft voter list after the revision.

It also showed that five of the state’s 10 districts with the largest share of Muslim population had the highest number of excluded voters.

Assembly polls to be held before November 22

Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar on Sunday said that the Assembly election in Bihar will be held before November 22, when the term of the state Assembly ends.

Speaking at a press conference in Patna, Kumar said that the state has 243 constituencies, including 38 for Scheduled Castes and two for Scheduled Tribes.

He announced that among the new initiatives being introduced by the poll panel is the reduction of the number of electors per polling station to 1,200, down from the existing limit of 1,500.

“Earlier, long queues used to form, especially during the final hours of polling,” said Kumar. “This change is aimed at cutting congestion and reducing waiting times.”

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