‘Best-ever performance’: ECI lauds its chief Gyanesh Kumar in conducting Bihar assembly polls

ELection direction of bharat (ECI) officials hailed the deal of the Bihar elections as the “ charles herbert best ever so performance” by the Gyanesh Kumar-led poll body, citing record voter turnout and zero repolls and no appeals during the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in the state.After the second and final phase of the Bihar polls ended on Tuesday, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar said Bihar had “shown the way to the nation,” noting: “SIR with zero appeals and highest voter turnout since 1951. Purest electoral rolls and enthusiastic participation of electors. Transparent and dedicated election machinery. Democracy wins. It has been an amazing journey for ECI.”The two-phase Bihar elections saw a historic voter turnout of 67.13%, with 71.6% turnout for women and 62.8% for men.Also read: NDA's landslide win will cause ripples far beyond BiharAccording to the officials quoted above, the SIR removed 2.2 million deceased voters, people who permanently shifted or not found accounted for 3.6 million and people enrolled in multiple places accounted for 700,000. The final electoral roll featured 74.2 million people.Officials said “criticism” of the CEC with regards to the SIR was expected from the Opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the Congress as early trends placed the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) ahead on Friday.“INC and RJD lost because 22 lakh dead, 36 lakh permanently shifted and 7 lakh duplicate voters could not vote in Bihar. Why ? Because CEC Gyanesh Kumar cleaned the electoral rolls through SIR with zero appeals. Now INC & RJD will fight with him, for sure,” an ECI official said.Also read: Congress 6/61. Rahul Gandhi's ‘vote chori’ pitch fails as MGB stares at humiliating lossSIR, which began in Bihar, had become a major political flashpoint ahead of the assembly elections in Bihar. Opposition parties have staged protests in Parliament and alleged that ECI was acting at the behest of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The government has dismissed the protests and said that infiltrators cannot have the right to vote.During counting on Friday, Congress leader Pawan Khera said the trends showed a contest “between the Election Commission of India and the people of Bihar”. “The initial trends certainly suggest that Gyanesh Kumar is gaining an upper hand over the people of Bihar,” he told reporters in the national Capital. “I can’t underestimate the people of Bihar. They have shown courage. They showed it despite the SIR and vote theft.”Fellow party leader Udit Raj, similarly, said the trends reflected the role of the SIR in shaping the voter list. “I won’t say that this victory is of the BJP-JD(U); this is a victory of the Election Commission, of SIR. ,” he told news agency ANI. “When objections were being raised, 89 lakh objections were raised. Still, EC said that nobody is raising any complaint. When they stoop to this level of cheating, what can we say? This is murder of democracy...”Former Chhattisgarh chief minister and Congress leader Bhupesh Baghel, meanwhile, said the “CEC was responsible” for the poll outcome. “If there is one person responsible for this entire election (result), it is Gyanesh Kumar. Congratulations and best wishes to him in advance for this,” he told news agency PTI.Election officials maintained that the SIR followed established protocol and was conducted as a routine revision before elections. ECI had earlier stated that the objective of the SIR was to include eligible voters and remove entries that no longer matched field data.Officials also said that the “absence of repolls pointed to procedural compliance across districts”. They added that turnout patterns varied across regions, with some districts reporting higher participation than others. A detailed gender wise breakup of the polling is expected soon.