We went to a polling booth with one of the highest deletions in Bihar. Here’s what we found

The air was festive in Pranpatti village in Bihar’s Purnia district in the middle of August. A pandal and a fair had been set up to mark Bishari Puja, an annual festival dedicated to the snake goddess Bishari, who brings good health and well-being to her worshippers.

Thronging the pandal were village residents, belonging largely to two groups – the Musahar community, which is listed as a Scheduled Caste in the state, and Kushwaha, a caste grouped among Bihar’s Other Backward Classes.

But since April 2024, Pranpatti’s voter list has had names of many Muslims.

“How could this be?” asked Rajesh Kumar, one of the village’s ward members. “This village does not have a single Muslim family. Yet their names have been in our voter list.”

“These are fake voters,” he said.

With the Election Commission conducting a special intensive revision of Bihar’s electoral roll, most of these newly added names now stand deleted from Pranpatti’s draft voter list. One of the polling stations in the village, in fact, has recorded the highest deletion of voters in Bihar’s Seemanchal region – more than 45% of the registered electorate.

Seemanchal includes Bihar’s Araria, Kishanganj, Purnia and Katihar districts. In Purnia, the draft voter list prepared during the Special Intensive Revision struck off 12%...

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