89L complaints submitted by Cong in Bihar SIR rejected: Khera

Senior Congress leader Pawan Khera on Sunday claimed that 89 lakh complaints of irregularities were flagged by the party’s Booth Level Agents (BLAs) in Bihar during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, but all were rejected by the Election Commission (EC). Alleging that the irregularities cast doubt on the EC’s intent, Khera demanded that the entire exercise be redone.
However, the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of Bihar countered that no BLA authorised by any district Congress president had submitted claims or objections on any deleted name.
“The EC keeps planting news that no complaints are coming from any party. The truth is the Congress submitted 89 lakh complaints, but our BLAs were told complaints can be accepted only from individuals, not political parties,” Khera said at a press meet.
He said names of 65 lakh voters were deleted from 90,540 booths in the state—25 lakh due to migration, 22 lakh as deceased, and 9.7 lakh as absent.
He added that 20,368 booths saw more than 100 deletions, 1,988 booths saw over 200 deletions, and 7,613 booths had over 70% women’s names deleted. “There are 635 booths where more than 75% of deleted migrants are women,” he alleged, calling for door-to-door verification. Khera also claimed that many voters had been allotted two EPIC numbers and receipts were available as proof.
The CEO’s office denied the charges, stressing that the draft rolls published on August 1 were not final and open for claims and objections.
It said alleged duplications cannot be construed as “final errors” since remedies exist through verification by Electoral Registration Officers.
Responding to reports of 67,826 “dubious duplicates,” the CEO’s office said these were based on data mining and subjective matching of names, relatives, and ages, which the Supreme Court has held insufficient without field inquiry. In rural Bihar, it said, identical names and similar ages were common.
The CEO clarified that provisional duplicates flagged by ERONET 2.0 software undergo ground verification before deletion. “Merely giving out a number on an imaginary basis does not establish any fact as correct. The presence of some provisional duplicates does not invalidate the SIR exercise,” it said.