Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar, accompanied by two Election Commission (EC) commissioners, is slated to visit Patna on October 4 and 5, according to official reports. The visit comes as the Election Commission gears up for the Bihar assembly elections, with dates expected to be announced shortly.
For the Bihar assembly polls, as well as bypolls in eight other states, the EC has appointed a total of 470 central observers. The panel comprises 320 officers from the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), 60 from the Indian Police Service (IPS), and 90 from services including the Indian Revenue Service (IRS), Indian Railway Accounts Service (IRAS), and Indian Civil Accounts Service (ICAS). These officials will monitor the electoral process in Bihar and constituencies across Jammu & Kashmir, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Telangana, Punjab, Mizoram, and Odisha.
The current Bihar assembly’s term is set to expire on November 22, making timely election preparations critical.
The EC has already published the final electoral roll for Bihar, listing 7.42 crore voters, a decline of over 47 lakh since June, when the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process began. The final roll, however, shows an increase compared to the draft roll of 7.24 crore published in August, after 65 lakh names were removed for being “absent,” “shifted,” or “dead.”
According to the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of Bihar, 21.53 lakh eligible voters were added to the roll after the August 1 draft, while 3.66 lakh names were deleted during the “claims and objections” phase. The EC has not specified the grounds for marking these electors as “ayogya” (ineligible) in the final roll.
District-wise breakdowns, gender-wise details, and age-group proportions are yet to be released. Earlier, the CEO had announced the publication of the final roll on social media, tagging the EC and sharing that citizens could verify their names at voters.eci.gov.in.
