On SIR, all did not end well, Pg9.

Key Highlights:

• The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar aimed to improve voter registration but resulted in a decrease in the proportion of adults on the voter list, from 97% to 90%.
• Approximately 80 lakh potential voters are missing from the final electoral rolls in September 2025, according to government estimates.
• The proportion of women on Bihar's voter list has decreased, with the number of missing women voters increasing to 16 lakh.
• Muslims were disproportionately excluded from the draft electoral rolls, accounting for 33% of the names deleted from the final list, despite comprising only 16.9% of the population.

Detailed Insights:

• The Supreme Court's monitoring forced the Election Commission of India (ECI) into damage control, leading to irregularities such as BLOs filling enumeration forms and the use of vanshavali to compensate for missing documents.
• The SIR exercise has negatively impacted the representation of women and Muslims in the voter list, reversing previous progress in narrowing the gender gap.
• The final voter list contains errors, including gibberish names, duplicate entries, invalid gender entries, and incorrect house numbers, undermining the ECI's claim of purification.
• The ECI's lack of transparency and fairness during the SIR process, including withholding information and refusing to disclose data, has eroded trust in the institution.

Key Concepts Involved:

• Special Summary Revision (SIR): An intensive review and update of electoral rolls conducted by the Election Commission of India.
• Electoral-Population Ratio: The proportion of the adult population that is registered to vote.
• Vanshavali: A controversial method of tracing current voters to family members on the 2003 electoral rolls to bypass document requirements.