Bihar witnesses huge jump in ghost voters in last seven years

pic: Manish Sinha

Patna,(BiharTimes): Patna and Nalanda districts have the highest number of fake voters in Bihar, where election authorities have detected 76 lakh ‘ghost’ voters in 243 Assembly constituencies.

They are followed by Gaya, Nawada, Vaishali, Lakhisarai, Begusarai, Muzaffarpur and Madhepura. Incidentally, all these districts are politically very significant. What is even more surprising is that they are not the districts bordering international boundaries, where there is a general fear of infiltrators enlisted as voters.

Besides, there are duplicate entries on the rolls, that is, the name of one person appeared on the electoral rolls of two or more Assembly constituencies of the state.

Reports say that the office of chief electoral officer (CEO) of Bihar is still in the process of ascertaining how many of these 76 lakh ‘ghost’ entries are ‘fakes’ and how many are ‘duplicate’.

Patna and Nalanda districts have 5.84 lakh and 3.40 lakh duplicate/fake entries.

While the existence of such a high number in Patna can be attributed to its big population, where a lot of outsiders live what is a matter of concern is how can it be so much in neighbouring Nalanda. Analysts find political reason behind this big figure.

Sensing that something is wrong the Election Commission of India (ECI) detected a discrepancy between the number of voters registered and the number of voter cards issued.

Sources in the Election Commission said in Nalanda the ratio of voters registered versus the voters’ cards issued, based on 2001 census, was 54:60, that is, out of every 100 population in the district, 54 were registered as voters but voter cards were issued to 60 persons. In Patna, the ratio stood at 56:61. The state’s average is 52 to 100.

It needs to be recalled that in the run up to the 2005 Bihar Assembly election the Election Commission weeded out the names of over 10 lakh fictitious voters. But what is mysterious is that in the last seven and a half years their figure jumped by seven and a half times.