Just over a quarter of Bihar's first-time voters have a birth certificate

Election Commission exercise has people scrambling for papers that are arduous to obtain

Millions of people in Bihar are scrambling to furnish any of the 11 documents the Election Commission (EC) has sought to update and cleanse electoral rolls before the state votes later this year.

 

The EC’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) is meant to fix electoral roll problems such as the inclusion of foreign illegal immigrants, frequent migration, and underreporting of deaths. But Opposition parties and civil society organisations say SIR’s timing and scope could disenfranchise large numbers of poor, rural, and marginalised voters.

 

The documents accepted for SIR include birth certificates, passports (issued before July 1, 1987), government-issued service identity cards,