As India finished the world’s largest general election last year, a storm of allegations and evidence is casting a long shadow over the poll process.

Recent voter‐roll revisions and Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercises in states like Bihar have uncovered alarming irregularities, raising painful questions about the integrity of the gone Lok Sabha polls. Official reports and court comments hint that the system might be far from foolproof.

For example, in Bihar the Election Commission’s door‐to‐door survey “has found that many people originally from Nepal, Bangladesh and Myanmar are currently living in the poll‐bound state”; people who were discovered to hold Indian Aadhaar and ration cards, apparently through illegal means. Such revelations led the EC to announce that these cases will be probed and “if the allegations are proved, the names of these voters will be struck off the voter list”.

Yet critics smell a rat. Opposition leaders point out that doing this intensive revision right before the Bihar Assembly election looks highly suspicious. Indeed, they argue that if so many questionable voters are suddenly found in Bihar’s rolls, one must ask whether similar ghost names lurk elsewhere. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, for instance, publicly demanded transparency: he noted that in just six months between the 2024 Lok Sabha and Maharashtra assembly polls, “the voter list grew by 8%… Some booths saw a 20-50% surge.

Media uncovered thousands of voters with no verified address. And the EC? Silent or complicit. These aren’t isolated glitches. This is vote theft,” he thundered. Demanding digital copies of the electoral rolls and CCTV footage, Gandhi insisted that the unexpected jump in numbers, 29,219 new voters in Nagpur South West, for example, screams foul play. His words capture the mood: if even one high-level BJP-held seat shows “machine‐gun growth” in voter count with no explanation, cynics ask, what’s to stop every constituency from similar jiggery‑pokery?

Foreign nationals on rolls: Ground reports have surfaced of tens of thousands of non-Indian names being found on voter lists. In Bihar’s SIR drive, Booth Level Officers (BLOs) reportedly identified “a large number of people from Nepal, Bangladesh, and Myanmar” possessing Indian voter IDs. (The EC’s goal is to remove any illegal migrant from the rolls.)

The Election Commission itself has indicated that it will roll out a nationwide intensive revision “to weed out foreign illegal migrants” by checking birthplace data. This essentially amounts to a countrywide “purge” plan. But critics ask: if rolls were in decent shape, why embark on such a drastic cleanup so close to elections? Remarkably, India’s rolls were cleaned up already in 2023, a national exercise actually reduced the electoral roll by about 18 lakh names (the first-ever drop) by deleting duplicates and had recovered to normal levels by January 2024. So why is a fresh crusade needed in Bihar (and perhaps soon elsewhere) again?

Timing of SIR – questioned by the Supreme Court: Even the Supreme Court has raised an eyebrow at the timing. During the SIR hearings, the Court acknowledged that revising rolls is within the EC’s constitutional mandate, but it bluntly asked why this intensive review is being tied to Bihar’s election alone. “Your exercise is not the problem, it is the timing,” the Court said. With about 8 crore voters in Bihar’s list, “is it possible to link this to the forthcoming election? A person will be disenfranchised ahead of the election and won’t have time to defend the exclusion,” it warned.

In other words, the SC stressed that cleaning up the rolls isn’t illegal “there is nothing wrong in this intensive process”, but doing it just weeks before polls risks throwing out genuine voters without recourse. The justices even urged the EC to ease documentation rules (accept Aadhaar, ration cards, etc.) so ordinary people aren’t wrongfully struck off. In short: the Court gave the EC leeway to continue the drive, calling it a “constitutional mandate,” but squarely flagged that mixing this overhaul with an imminent election could disenfranchise millions.

Voter purge statistics: By mid-July 2025, the data from Bihar’s SIR is startling. The EC reported that 88.18% of Bihar’s 7.89 crore voters had been covered in the exercise, and of those, 35 lakh names (about 5%) are slated for deletion. Broken down, this includes roughly 12.5 lakh people who have died since they were added (1.59%), 17.5 lakh who have permanently moved out (2.2%), and 5.5 lakh found registered in two places (0.73%).

If even a fifth of these were actually still alive and eligible, that could mean millions of legitimate votes lost. (The EC says the final roll will allow appeals, but timing is tight.) In some survey areas, the extent of the cleanup has been jaw-dropping: one report noted “over 35 lakh voters in Bihar either dead, shifted out, or enrolled elsewhere”. The opposition points out that when nearly 5% of a state’s roll is now being tossed, that’s a recipe for massive disputes and potentially mass disenfranchisement right before an election.

Opposition allegations of fraud: Against this backdrop, opposition leaders have not held back. Rahul Gandhi and other INDIA bloc members have repeatedly alleged a political motive. The Congress has branded the Bihar revision “dangerous and bizarre,” with party spokespersons warning it unfairly targets anyone added after 2003 as if they’re “suspects”. Congress veteran Abhishek Manu Singhvi called it “arbitrary and legally questionable” to assume newer voters are illegitimate.

Congress MP and ex‐bureaucrat Udit Raj went further, claiming on camera that if “names of people from Myanmar and Bangladesh are in the voter list, then how can the Lok Sabha elections be legitimate?” (questioning what Bihar’s CM and the Centre have been doing) and warning that the plot is to “cut the votes of Rahul Gandhi and the INDIA alliance” by creating fake lists; “a model like Maharashtra is being prepared,” he charged. In that vein, AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi slammed the drive as a back-door NRC: he reminded reporters that Bihar’s rolls were already scrubbed for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls via a Special Summary Revision, so another round was unnecessary.

He warned the late timing would have “a deleterious effect on electors” and even said citizens are now being forced to prove not just their own birth but their parents’ birth, akin to proving ancestral “credentials”. In short, many in opposition see a pattern: whispers of “vote theft” in Maharashtra, high-profile rallies in Bihar and charges that state and central leaders are cynically staging this cleanup to tip the scales.

Nationwide roll overhaul: The EC is preparing for a pan-India intensive revision after July 2025, claiming it’s a SC-approved mandate to cleanse rolls – but skeptical minds worry: will this happen fairly, or only where needed for ruling party gains?

ECI’s response and official line: The Election Commission has flatly denied any bias. It wrote to Rahul Gandhi that “all elections are conducted strictly in accordance with laws” and highlighted the army of officials and party agents involved; over 100,000 BLOs, hundreds of Returning Officers and Observers, and more than 100,000 polling agents (over 28,000 of them from Congress alone) in Maharashtra, to argue that the system has robust checks and any grievances should be resolved through election petitions.

CEC Rajiv Kumar has emphasized the record turnout: he called the 2024 vote “historic” and promised that the counting process is “very robust” and “transparent”, warning that if anyone tries fraud they will face strict action. In other words, the official stance is confidence in the machinery: ECI insists the voter list revisions are legal cleanup, and recounts/counts will be free and fair, with any doubts resolvable in court or by ECI’s appeals process.

Yet the cloud of doubt remains. Statistically, never before had the electoral roll shrunk (it dropped ~18 lakh in 2023) or seen such late, large‐scale deletions tied to a single state’s polls. With 642 million Indians casting ballots in 2024, even tiny irregularities can affect tens of thousands of seats. And when senior politicians publicly accuse the process of being rigged (while citing real data of rolling anomalies), a healthy democracy must reckon with that fear.

It is impossible to prove a negative, we cannot categorically say all Lok Sabha votes will be tainted, but the questions now burning in many voters’ minds are stark: Why did the EC single out Bihar (instead of doing this long ago everywhere)? Why did it tie this massive revision to an election campaign, when past cleanups quietly happened between elections?

If hundreds of thousands are “dubious” in one state’s list, could there be similar ghosts nationwide? The Supreme Court has already voiced its unease, and voices from across the spectrum have demanded answers. In a charged, satirical way, one might say it’s as if India’s voters have been given not just ballots but also detective work: Which names on my list are real? Which are fake? And will there even be time to sort it out before I cast my vote?

Until the EC offers clear transparency, say, fully published digital rolls and independent audits, these doubts will linger. The only solace is that all the parties could legally appeal or challenge any injustices after results. But by then, for millions who may be wrongly purged or displaced in the confusion, the damage is done.

As one legal observer noted, “this isn’t about legality; it’s about lost trust”. And if democracy is built on trust, the current evidence gives plenty of sincere citizens cause to worry that India’s 2024 polls could turn out to be less of a festive voting day and more of a post-election fight for legitimacy. The alarms have been sounded: will the counting be fair, or is the game already stacked?