Aurangabad, New DelhiAugust 19, 2025 08:21 AM IST First published on: Aug 19, 2025 at 08:21 AM ISTShareAfter the Election Commission (EC) released details of the 65 lakh voters deleted in the first phase of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise in Bihar on Sunday, Opposition parties in the state have asked their cadre to check lists in each booth for anomalies and bring them to their attention.“We have been exposing the anomalies since even before the list was published. How do you think we have produced people declared dead by the EC? This work has been going on at the booth level and MLAs and MPs are monitoring the same on the ground. A searchable list put out by the EC on the orders of the Supreme Court has made the verification job easier,” RJD’s Buxar MP Sudhakar Singh told The Indian Express.AdvertisementRJD spokesperson Mrityunjay Tiwari reiterated the party’s position was clear: that the SIR “is an exercise in vote theft”.“The entire exercise is illegitimised when you see that it has not added a single vote but only deleted (votes). After the publication of the deletion list, the district-in-charges of the party have been sensitised about the task at hand. The work is already on. Booth-level workers who are in touch with people in their area are verifying the correctness of the deletion exercise. We are sure many examples of genuine voters being deprived of their right to franchise are going to come out,” he said.A Booth Level Agent (BLA) of the Congress from the Sultanganj Assembly seat in Bhagalpur, Shyam Sundar Thakur, told The Indian Express there were several problems with the list of voters deleted from the rolls in his constituency.Advertisement“We have started submitting documents of those whose names have been deleted. Those who are dead have managed to make it to the voter list. And those alive and living in the village have been deleted. There are so many problems. I met the BLO (Booth Level Officer) today and conveyed the issues to him. I have already submitted documents of some people whose names have been deleted,” said Thakur.Another Congress BLA in Sultaganj, Ram Manohar Jha, said the party would take a call regarding the deletions.“The deletions have happened most arbitrarily. The majority of deletions that have happened are those of our voters who hail from disadvantaged backgrounds. We will take the issues to the BLOs and get the names added back to the voter list. If it doesn’t happen, then our party’s top leadership will decide what to do,” said Jha.Sources, however, said the analysis of the lists was a “massive exercise” that would test the grassroots network and organisational strength of the Opposition parties.most read“All will depend upon how strongly and aggressively local leaders, MLAs and MPs of various INDIA bloc parties follow up with the workers and verify with the people in their region, given the paucity of time. By September 1 (the EC-mandated date to submit claims and objections in the SIR lists), we need to produce strong evidence of large-scale disenfranchisement in the process,” a senior RJD leader said.He said the “whole exercise” is “exposing the widespread discrepancies” in voter lists across Bihar.“Many prominent people have been found with two EPIC (Electors Photo Identity Card) numbers. It has completely exposed the EC,” a senior RJD leader said.