Draft electoral rolls of Bihar, prepared as part of the Election Commission's contentious special intensive revision (SIR), will be published at 3 pm today amid vehement protests by the opposition over fears of en masse exclusion of voters.
Sources said the draft for each of the 243 Assembly constituencies across 90,817 polling stations would be shared with all political parties by the 38 district collectors before being released.
On June 24, the ECI ordered an intensive revision of the electoral rolls of Bihar, triggering widespread panic and confusion on the ground. The last such revision in the state was carried out in 2003.
As per its last update, the ECI said it had received enumeration forms from 7.23 crore of Bihar's 7.89 crore existing electors.
The poll watchdog said around 64 lakh names would be removed from the rolls as the electors were found to have either died or migrated permanently or registered in more than one place or untraceable.
With the first phase now over, the battleground now shifts to the claims and objections period - from August 1 to September 1.
During this period, the electors will have to submit documents, from a list of 11 specified by the EC, to establish their eligibility. These documents will then be scrutinised, and the final roll will be published on September 30.
A major bone of contention was the poll body's decision not to include Aadhaar, ration card and voter ID card in the list of 11 documents for verification.
The matter also reached the Supreme Court, which, even though it didn't pause the exercise, asked the ECI to consider allowing Aadhaar. The top court, however, said it would step in if the revision of electoral rolls led to "mass exclusion" of voters.
The major objection of the opposition is the potential disenfranchisement of a large number of the existing electors. The issue saw widespread protests by the opposition from Parliament to the Bihar Assembly.
Bihar leader of the opposition, Tejashwi Yadav, went as far as saying that his party would "boycott" the upcoming elections if concerns were not addressed.
