Bihar's 2.2 Million 'Dead' Voters: Election Chief Explains Decades-Old Error

He attributed this to previous enumeration methods and a reliance on families reporting deaths. He also noted the role of booth-level agents in improving electoral roll accuracy.

Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar clarified that the 2.2 million "deceased" electors in Bihar weren't recent deaths, but unrecorded deaths from the past two decades.

Source : PTI

New Delhi, Aug 17 (PTI) Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar on Sunday said the nearly 22 lakh electors identified as deceased in Bihar did not die recently but were perhaps not recorded in the past.

Responding to a question at a press conference, Kumar said during the previous normal revision of electoral rolls, enumeration forms were not handed out to every household.

Till people do not inform about deaths in their families, booth level officers have no means to know about such cases, he said.

"Therefore, 22 lakh electors had not died in the last six months, but these are those dead electors who have not been recorded in the past 20 years," Kumar said.

This "truth" is coming to the fore due to enumeration forms, he added.

Kumar also said that booth-level officers can commit mistakes while booth-level agents appointed by political parties can help "purify" electoral rolls. 

(Disclaimer: This report has been published as part of the auto-generated syndicate wire feed. Apart from the headline, no editing has been done in the copy by ABP Live.)