EC plans new voter cards for all Bihar voters post SIR

The Election Commission plans to issue new voter identity cards to all electors of Bihar after the completion of the ongoing special intensive revision of electoral rolls in the state, officials said on Sunday. They added that a final call on when the new cards will be issued is yet to be taken by the poll authority. Officials said while the plan is to issue every Bihar voter with a new voter card, a final call on when and how the exercise will be carried out is yet to be taken. When electors were given enumeration forms, they were asked to submit the filled up document along with their latest photograph. The new photograph will be used to update records and issuing fresh voter cards. According to the draft electoral roll of Bihar published on August 1, the state has 7.24 crore electors. The final voters list will be published on September 30 and assembly elections in the state are likely to be held in November. The term of the present assembly ends on November 22 and a new House has to be constituted before that.

According to the EC, 99 per cent of those who had filled up enumeration forms have so far submitted their documents. Nearly 30,000 people have filed pleas for inclusion in the voters list as their names were missing from the draft rolls. Separately, Bihar has become the first state where the number of electors per polling stations has been reduced from 1500 to a maximum of 1200 as part of rationalisation exercise to ensure lesser crowding of polling stations on voting day. Due to rationalisation, the number of polling stations in the state has gone up from 77,000 to 90,000. The rationalisation exercise will eventually be carried out pan India. In the last Lok Sabha elections, there were 10.5 lakh polling stations in the country.