NEW DELHI: The Bihar Leader Electoral Officer (CEO) on Sunday pushed aside media stories alleging large-scale duplication within the state’s draft electoral rolls (SIR 2025), calling the claims “speculative, untimely, and opposite to regulation.”In a put up on X, the CEO emphasized that the SIR is a statutory workout carried out beneath the Illustration of the Folks Act 1950 and the Registration of Electors Regulations 1960. “The SIR is an ongoing statutory procedure performed beneath the Illustration of the Folks Act, 1950 and the Registration of Electors Regulations,” the CEO mentioned. The Bihar CEO clarified that the present draft rolls aren’t ultimate. “They’re explicitly meant for public scrutiny, inviting claims and objections from electors, political events, and all different stakeholders. Any alleged duplication on the draft degree can’t be construed as a ‘ultimate error’ or ‘unlawful inclusion’, because the regulation supplies a treatment in the course of the claims/objections length and next verification through Electoral Registration Officials (EROs),” the put up learn. Addressing the media document’s declare of 67,826 “doubtful duplicates,” the CEO mentioned, “The determine is according to information mining and subjective matching of brand/relative/age mixtures. Those parameters, with out documentary and box verification, can not conclusively end up duplication. In Bihar, particularly in rural constituencies, it’s common for a couple of folks to proportion similar names, parental names, or even an identical ages. The Perfect Court docket has recognised such demographic similarities as inadequate evidence of duplication with out box inquiry.” The CEO additional defined that each one demographically an identical entries flagged right through the draft degree go through box verification and may also be challenged through stakeholders right through the continuing claims and objections length. “However, if demographically an identical entries are discovered, they’re being recognized and got rid of right through the claims and objections length. In such instances, all stakeholders can tell the Electoral Registration Officer, record their objections, and essential motion may also be taken,” the CEO added.The CEO additionally rejected claims that rolls had been “locked” to cover duplication, announcing safeguards had been in position to offer protection to information integrity, mentioning a 2018 Perfect Court docket ruling. It additional pushed aside extrapolations suggesting lakhs of duplicates as “legally untenable” with out verified proof. Reaffirming the prison procedure, the Fee famous that Phase 22 of the Illustration of the Folks Act, 1950 empowers EROs to delete duplicates if confirmed, and any elector or political celebration can officially carry objections.