How many illegal foreigners were found in Bihar SIR? CEC was asked; he says ‘data not with ECI’ – Video

Bihar Assembly Elections 2025: Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar on Monday said that the data of number of illegal foreigners in Bihar is not with the Election Commission of India (ECI). The CEC said the ECI does not have the individual category data on how many names were deleted from Bihar voter roll during the SIR under a particular category. 

He said the data can be found with the Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) and Assistant Electoral Registration Officers (AEROs) of a particular region. 

The ECI announced the dates of polls for Bihar assembly elections, setting the stage for an intense electoral battle that will conclude with the results on November 14. The polling will be held in two phases on November 6 and November 11. During the press conference at Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi, the CEC also addressed questions relating to election preparations, rules, and the Special Intensive Revision (SIR).

During the question-answer session, a number of reporters inquired about the number of illegal foreigners that ECI identified during the intensive revision and this has been the core ground of the entire exercise.

CEC explains why ECI does not have the data

Responding to the questions, CEC Gyanesh Kumar said that during the purification of the voter roll, all the voters along with the ECI officials contributed. In this process, when the draft list was released, approximately 6.5 million voters were removed from the list.

When the final list was released, 3.6 million voters were removed from the list. The main reasons for the removal of the final list, the CEC said –

• because some voters died
• the inability of some voters to prove that they are citizens of India
• permanent migration of some voters’ to other places, and
• removing names of voters who were present in more than one list

“Because all these lists have been shared with everyone, at the level of the Legislative Assembly, the district level, and the state level, and have been shared with the statistics,” the CEC said.

“That is why, all these different lists that you are talking about, are not at the level of the Election Commission, but at the level of the ERO, DEO, and CEO,” CEC Gyanesh Kumar concluded.

Bihar SIR- A new narrative in politics of the state

For decades, Bihar’s politics has been driven by caste, women empowerment, development, farmers and other ground-level issues. For the first time, the narrative changed and the entire campaigning began taking place on the Special Intensive Revision. The opposition remarked it as an exercise being done to remove voters who would choose the opposition alliance in the elections.

They called it an attempt of “vote theft“, took part in voter awareness rallies, and despite multiple assurances from the ECI went to the Supreme Court.

The top court will hear the final arguments on the case on Tuesday (October 7).