Bihar Polls: Vote Theft Vs Illegal Immigration

The electoral slugfest in the north Indian state of Bihar seems to be headed for a no-holds-barred fight.

The contest is between the Mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) led by the Congress party and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Janata Dal (United) or JD(U).

The campaign in the run-up to the election due later this year is defined by the political narratives of “vote theft” and “infiltrators” from Bangladesh.

The Special Intensive Review (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar undertaken six months before the election by the Election Commission (EC) has played a role in setting these opposing narratives.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during his recent visit to the poll-bound state, obliquely endorsed SIR as a measure taken to purge the electoral rolls of “ghuspaithias” (infiltrators). The reference was to Bangladeshi Muslim illegal immigrants.

He promised the people that he would neither allow any jobs to be taken away by the ‘infiltrators’ nor the future of the people of Bihar to be decided by illegal voters.

Rahul Gandhi’s campaign on “vote theft” as disenfranchisement has become the Opposition’s main political plank against the BJP and the Modi government.

Gandhi has dramatically escalated the political contest in Bihar by going for a 1,300 km long march over 16 days, dubbed as “Voter Adhikar Yatra (Voters’ Right March)”. The aim is to sensitise the voters on the alleged “vote theft” by the Election Commission of India in connivance with the ruling BJP.

The announcement of the SIR gave Gandhi the much-needed traction in Bihar, where his party, the Congress, had become relatively inconsequential in the elections over the years. In the last elections in 2020, the party won 19 seats in the 243 member assembly.

Gandhi is now trying to build on his earlier campaign demanding a caste census (now reluctantly conceded by the Modi government but advertising it as a government initiative) and is linking it to the assault on the rights of the disadvantaged castes.

During his Voter Adhikar Yatra, Gandhi, learning from his past experiences, is not fixated on a single-agenda defining his campaign. Instead, he is framing his narrative along local issues like unemployment, migration, price rise, difficulties of the farming community and the GST-related hardships of traders.

He then links them with Modi’s assault on democratic institutions, including the EC, and his pro-corporate policies to help his cronies.

The decision of the EC on the SIR in Bihar has come as a blessing in disguise to the Opposition alliance in the state, which had run out of steam unable to counter the broad, cohesive coalition of the NDA, topped with Modi’s demagoguery.

Despite incumbent Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s weakened leadership and indifferent health, the RJD, which is the fulcrum of Opposition parties in Bihar, has not been able to broaden its social base outside its Muslim-Yadav alliance.

Through the Voter Adhikar Yatra, Gandhi has given a needed extra push to the alliance. He has done this by linking the so-called vote theft with the eventual snatching of democratic rights and welfare benefits like free food and free houses from the Dalits, Extremely Backward Castes, OBCs and the minorities. The Opposition is expecting a replay of its campaign of “Constitution-and-reservation-in-danger” and the sentiments it evoked among the Dalits and OBCs during the parliamentary election of 2024.

The enthusiastic turnout at his public rallies suggests that slogans such as “Vote Chor, Gaddi Chhor (Vote Thief, Leave the Throne)” are resonating with the people at the moment. That is why SIR may turn out to be more than a routine exercise to revise the electoral rolls.

The intensive revision of the election rolls by itself is not unconstitutional, and the EC is entitled to conduct such a revision. However, the timeline of 90 days from June 25 to September 25 to complete the process is unusual given the fact that Bihar has a large number of migrant workers in different parts of the country. Those who are working in other states will find it difficult to complete the paperwork required to prove that they are genuine voters of Bihar.

The opposition parties allege that the EC is acting in a partisan manner under the BJP’s influence and is implementing the controversial National Register of Citizens through the back-door in Bihar.

They also argue that settling the citizenship issue is beyond the constitutional brief of the EC. Since a summary revision of the electoral rolls had been done earlier in the month of January for Bihar, the hurriedly announced SIR is seen by the Opposition parties as malicious.

The issue has reached the Supreme Court, which has given a series of interim orders, including instructing the EC to consider the Aadhar card for the identification of a voter and making the list of the deleted voters public.

The list of 6.67 million deleted voters put out by the EC has 2.2 million as declared dead, 3.6 million as those who have shifted to other states and 0.7 million registered at multiple places. The rest have been declared untraceable. The EC not adding a single new voter to the list has further fuelled the suspicion about the integrity of SIR and the fairness of the EC, whose credibility has nosedived of late.

Some instances of people declared dead surfacing during the Supreme Court hearing and the number of women surpassing men in the deleted list, when it is men who migrate more than women, are some examples which the Opposition parties have cited to point out the “ulterior motive” of the EC.

It was suspected since the launching of the SIR that the prime targets were the Muslim voters, particularly in the four Seemanchal  districts of Purnea, Katihar, Kishanganj and Araria bordering West Bengal. The August 15 Independence day speech of Modi on the so-called ‘Demographic Mission’ only lent credence to the suspicion when he said, “These ghuspaithias (infiltrators) are snatching the bread and butter of our youth. This will not be tolerated.”

However, barring Kishanganj (11.8 percent voters deleted) and Purnea (12.08 percent), the proportion of deleted voters in the remaining Seemanchal districts is only marginally higher or near the state average of 8.31 percent.

It is quite likely that the SIR is going to impact voters in the Bihar assembly election. The C-Voter election tracker for Bihar for August 2025 confirms this, with a survey reporting that 67 percent of respondents believed the EC should answer the questions raised by Rahul Gandhi.

It seems that the poor, the downtrodden and the underprivileged castes in Bihar are buying the Opposition’s narrative that the SIR  infringes on their democratic rights and would also take away their identity as voters which could deprive them of their social welfare benefits.

(Published under Creative Commons from 360info.org)