Patna: As Bihar assembly elections are approaching, opposition leader Tejashwi Yadav has launched a stinging attack on the Election Commission of India (ECI), saying it is a propped-up commission of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar Janata Dal (United). The chief of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) who is representing the opposition alliance INDIA alleges that the ECI has been evading calls to meet with them to debate their interest in a contentious voter list revision exercise. Tension in an already heated political environment has further grown when Yadav harshly criticised, like his jibe that the Election Commissioner has become Mr India.
The outcry focuses on the decision of the ECI to carry out a special intensive revision of the electoral rolls of the state of Bihar that was to be announced on June 28, 2025. The process, which seeks to limit voting to only Indian citizens, necessitates a voter providing a lot of documents, including birth certificates of the voter and his or her parents, depending on the age. The opposition parties, RJD-led, Congress and the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), are complaining that the exercise is purely aimed at denying the marginalised populations, especially Dalits, Muslims and backward classes, a voice through the upcoming elections likely to be held in October or November.
Speaking to ANI, Yadav also expressed doubts over the revision since it would have to be done by July 1 to 31, noting how it would be difficult to do so so quickly. He (Lawrence) said he would like to know how a giant exercise like this involving 78.9 million voters can be done in 25 days as compared to a similar exercise 12 years before, which took a period of two years. He opined that the step taken by the ECI was politically correct and that the recent visit of Nitish Kumar to Delhi was proof of this coordination with the central government. That is a conspiracy to take away people’s right to vote, Yadav accused and threatened to be denied the welfare schemes people removed.
The INDIA group that consists of the RJD, Congress, and left parties has continuously appealed to the ECI to meet them, but according to Yadav, they have been ignored. He said, speaking at Patna, we had never seen such a thing. The opposition is not getting an opportunity to meet the Election Commission in a state which is going to elections. One could say that the Commissioner has gained invisibility like Mr India.” The source of reference is a famous Bollywood movie regarding an invisible protagonist that underlines Yadav’s accusation against the ECI to present itself to avoid responsibility.
Yadav also accused the ECI of acting as a Commission of Modi and alleged that it is secretly seeing that both the BJP and JD (U), who are reportedly losing ground in Bihar, are favoured. Even a letter of RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav to the ECI went unanswered, he added. It has been reported that the ECI might like to meet the alliances separately and not in a coalition, a step that Yadav termed suspicious. He said, referring to the way the Commission has been carrying out a fair poll in one state, that they say One Nation, One Election and yet they are not able to conduct a fair poll in one state then how can we say that the elections in this country are going to be fair, or is the Commission fair?
The issue of voter list revision is not the only area of concern for the opposition. The action of ECI, Yadav cautioned, may be a prelude to presidential rule in Bihar in favour of the centralisation of power in the hands of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This amounts to a manhunt on democracy and the Constitution, he immediately announced, describing the ECI as tearing its mandate to hold free and fair elections. Congress leader Pawan Khera, addressing a joint press conference in Patna, compared the neutrality of the ECI to Gandhi’s three monkeys, which say, act, and speak nothing.
The alliance have threatened to intensify their action in case the ECI does not do anything about their concerns. A delegation is to be sent to the Commission, and Yadav and other leaders threaten to take legal and public action. He said, We will battle this in the streets and in the courts, as other allies in the alliance joined in the fight like the Congress and CPI(ML). The unity of the opposition was evidenced at the Patna press conference through the pledge of the leaders to fight for all 243 seats in the assembly unitedly, with problems revolving around unemployment, inflation, and social justice.
The voter list issue has further increased the stakes in Bihar, where the 2025 elections are panning out as a highly competitive one between the BJP-JD(U)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and the RJD-Congress-led INDIA bloc. People have given Yadav, who has put himself as the face of the opposition as chief minister, a lot of support in the alliance, but the Congress has not declared him yet. Surveys in recent times indicate that Yadav is a favourite of many voters so far, with his developmental agenda aiming at youth employment particularly taking ground.
A recent leak of this year’s exam paper has sparked protests against the NDA in the realm of governance. The critics claim the move to revise the voter list is a last-minute effort by the BJP and JD(U) to unduly rig the elections, with the NDA recording a less-than-impressive win in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls in Bihar. The silence of the ECI has only added fuel to this kind of accusation, as can be seen on X, where people are angry at perceived bias.