Bihar’s electoral roll swelled by nearly 1.4 million names since the publication of the post-special intensive revision (SIR) in Bihar on September 30 last year, officials attached with the state electoral officer(CEO) have said.
The current electoral roll — last updated on October 1 this year — has 75.5 million voters, roughly 1.4 million names more than the 74.1 million in the September 2025 roll, published after the end of SIR. The additional 1.4 million names comprise people seeking to return to the rolls, new voters and young voters enrolling for the first time, said the second officer. The number of voters in Bihar went up by 4.19 million in 2023-24 — the year of Lok Sabha elections — and by 4.14 million in 2024-25, the year of assembly polls in the state. All the 1.4 million people added to the post-SIR electoral roll, including new or first-time voters, have had to fill Form 6 for new enrolment. The three-month SIR exercise in Bihar undertaken between June 25 and September 30, 2025 — the first in the country in the current series — initially removed 6.56 million people from the rolls, after 2.23 million voters were reported dead, 3.64 million shifted, and 0.68 million voters found to have their names at more than one location, out of the 78.9 million voters reported before the exercise. The development comes days after ECI told state election authorities that eligible citizens seeking enrolment need not submit a separate declaration – which seeks details of parental linkage to the previous SIR – along with Form 6.
“The number of enrolment goes up in an election year and then declines. It happens before the Lok Sabha, the legislative assembly or the panchayat polls,” said one of the officers quoted above on Wednesday.
