Written by Santosh SinghPatna | October 6, 2025 04:40 AM IST 5 min readChief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar on Sunday said the list of deleted electors in Bihar includes foreigners, apart from those who have permanently shifted or passed away. Kumar did not specify the number of foreigners removed from the rolls, which, he said, had been “purified”.Addressing a press conference after a two-day visit to Bihar to review poll preparations, Kumar said while the Election Commission (EC) would continue to accept Aadhaar during the proposed Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in the rest of the country, voters would also have to submit another document as proof of their identity.“The list of those deleted includes dead electors, foreigners, and the permanently shifted. As for the (demand for the publication of) list of 3.66 lakh people, district collectors (DMs) have shared it with district presidents of recognised political parties. Anyone can raise objections till 10 days before the date of filing nomination by candidates,” Kumar said when asked if the poll panel had identified “infiltrators or foreigners”.He also defended the SIR exercise in Bihar so close to the polls, saying the rules mandate the “cleansing” of the rolls before every election. “With the successful completion of SIR, the voters’ list in Bihar has been purified. It is after a gap of 22 years that such a cleansing has taken place. The exercise will now be conducted across the country,” Kumar said.Read | Bihar SIR: Voter list shrinks 6% to 7.42 Cr, citizenship no factor in 99% deletionsAsked if Aadhaar would be accepted as the 12th document in the proposed pan-India SIR exercise, Kumar, who was accompanied by ECs Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, said, “You all would have filled your enumeration forms. It required the Aadhar card. The honourable Supreme Court asked us to accept the Aadhaar card as the 12th document. But the Supreme Court’s previous ruling and even the Aadhaar Act clearly say Aadhaar is not a proof of citizenship, nor of date of birth or address. It is surely proof of one’s identity. That way, we will continue to accept it, but another document will be needed for ‘patrata (eligibility to be a voter)’.”The court on September 8 directed the EC to accept Aadhaar as a 12th document in addition to the 11 it permitted for identification for people to be included in the final electoral roll during the SIR in Bihar. The court, however, made it clear that Aadhaar “is not proof of citizenship” and stated that the EC would be entitled to assess its authenticity. The following day, the poll panel issued instructions on the matter to Bihar’s Chief Electoral Officer.Kumar on Sunday began his speech in Bhojpuri and Maithili before switching to Hindi. The Commission also feted some Booth Level Officers (BLOs) at the event on the successful completion of the SIR. “Just as the Vaishali republic is a guide for the world, the SIR conducted in Bihar will show the path to SIR in the rest of the country,” the CEC said, adding that the “7.42 crore voters (in the final electoral roll) had thanked” the poll panel.Story continues below this adQuestioned about the decrease in sex ratio in the final electoral roll, Kumar said, “Our BLOs reached all the voters. If any woman voter was left out, she can still apply.”Asked why criminal elements were still entering the electoral fray, the CEC said the poll panel follows the “Constitutional provisions and related law enacted by Parliament” and from now, an officer from the revenue services would be deployed to monitor candidates’ expenses. Kumar said that in the coming elections, voters would be allowed to keep their mobile phones just outside polling booths, and Booth Level Agents (BLAs) would be posted just 100 yards from the booths.Among the new initiatives, the EC would begin webcasting from all booths, Kumar said. Earlier, 50-60% of the booths used to have the webcasting facility. “We have also fixed the limit of 1,200 voters in a polling booth. This will be applicable to the rest of the country now … Postal ballots will be fully counted before the conclusion of two rounds of EVM votes,” added the CEC.Kumar refused to say when the election dates would be announced, saying the parties had proposed that the polls be held after the Chhath Puja later this month, and in one to three phases.Santosh Singh is a Senior Assistant Editor with The Indian Express since June 2008. He covers Bihar with main focus on politics, society and governance. Investigative and explanatory stories are also his forte. Singh has 25 years of experience in print journalism covering Bihar, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka. ... Read MoreStay updated with the latest - Click here to follow us on Instagram© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd