As the political landscape heats up in Bihar ahead of upcoming state assembly elections, political parties and their stooges are doing all they can to turn the polls in their favour. While all that is fair game, what is not is trying to seed doubt and distrust amongst the voters especially against well established democratic procedures.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) has been the latest target for opposition which is unable to win elections in recent times on merit. The opposition forgets that it is the same ECI and same voting procedure are followed when they win elections. However, logic steps aside when it comes to perpetuating propaganda.
Speaking of propaganda, a dubious outlet The Reporters’ Collective, which claims to be an investigative reporting platform but has a clear ideological stand and weak methodology, recently came out with a report casting aspersions and doubts on the Bihar Special Intensive Revision (SIR), a large-scale voter cleanup drive undertaken by the ECI. The SIR drive aims to remove duplicate and ineligible names from the voters list.
Its purpose is simple yet vital: to ensure that every name on the electoral roll is genuine, current and eligible. Over time, voter lists naturally accumulate inaccuracies. Names of deceased individuals, people who have migrated or duplicate entries often end up being part of the electoral roll. The SIR seeks to clean these records so that elections reflect the true will of legitimate voters.
The Reports’ Collective’s first misleading claim
The Reporters’ Collective claims that in Bihar’s finalised voter database of 243 assembly constituencies, they found over 14.35 lakh suspect duplicate voters. It claimed that these duplicate voters had two different voter IDs but same name, same name of a relative and age difference of 0-5 years. The ECI has said that it has removed over 7 lakh duplicate voters in Bihar elections.
If there are more duplicate voters in the list published by the ECI, surely at least one of the political parties, especially Congress which is running the whole ‘vote chori’ campaign, would have raised claims and filed appeals?
Out of total 1.6 lakh Booth Level Officers (BLOs), not a single one of them filed any objection?
In fact, under the Representation of Peoples’ Act Section 24, they still have provision to appeal to DM or CEO. Why are they not doing so?
Here is the tweet by Chief Electoral Officer, Bihar mentioning the number of appeals received as on 9th October, 2025 under section 24 of RPA.
आवश्यक सूचना
— Chief Electoral Officer, Bihar (@CEOBihar) October 9, 2025
बिहार राज्य में विशेष गहन पुनरीक्षण अभियान, 2025 के दौरान सभी 243 विधानसभा निर्वाचन क्षेत्रों में निर्वाचक निबंधन पदाधिकारी द्वारा निर्वाचक सूची में नाम जोड़ने एवं विलोपन के संबंध में, दिनांक 09.10.2025 तक लोक प्रतिनिधित्व अधिनियम की धारा 24(क) के तहत जिला… pic.twitter.com/mODSY1IAal
The CEO Bihar has been tweeting every day the list of appeals from all 38 districts, but none of the political parties have filed any appeal.
The Reporters’ Collective’s second misleading claim
TRC has claimed that 1.32 crore voters have been registered on dubious or non-existent addresses. It claims that these 1.32 crore addresses of voters are not notional addresses the ECI is required to provide families of homeless voters or those living in houses which are not registered.
Now, the thing is, the ECI has also clarified it multiple times that sometimes in smaller villages or bastis, where panchayat or municipalities have not allotted them numbers are given numbers of the nearby house. Or sometimes house number is zero or notional. The TRC is making a sweeping statement on these voters but there are two important points here. None of the 1.6 lakh booth level workers of any of the political parties have filed any appeal, as usual. And secondly, the so-called investigative reporters don’t seem to have actually on ground to talk to these voters.
How are you an investigative journalist if your so-called investigation is not backed with actual people? Just because you do not understand how SIR is conducted and how the voter list was compiled, does not mean that there is fraud. Your lack of intelligence is not good enough reason for independent institutions who are actually doing their jobs to waste time giving clarifications.
The Prashant Bhushan madness
Earlier on Thursday, 9th October, senior advocate Prashant Bhushan was caught submitting a false affidavit in the Supreme Court in the Bihar SIR case. The SC bench of Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymala Bagchi expressed its displeasure with Advocate Bhushan, the lawyer of the ADR (Association for Democratic Reforms), an NGO challenging the SIR in Bihar, for handing over the person’s affidavit without due verification.
Senior Advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, appearing for the Election Commission of India (ECI) pointed out that the particular instance raised by ADR about the individual whose name was included in the draft list but deleted from final list was incorrect as the person’s name not there in the draft list as he did not submit the enumeration form. Advocate Dwivedi pointed out that submitting false affidavit amounts to perjury and added that the organisation, ADR, must satisfy itself of the affidavit before bringing up to the court.
Justice Bagchi pulled up Advocate Bhushan and said how if such documents were handed over to him the day prior and hence he had a responsibility when he handed them over to the bench. Further expressing displeasure that the NGO represented by Bhushan had not done due diligence, Justice Bagchi pointed out how it is now demonstrated the facts are false.
Who is behind The Reporters’ Collective?
The Reporters’ Collective was established by Nitin Sethi and Kumar Sambhav Srivastava and is affiliated with the Global Investigative Journalism Network. It obtains financial support from George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, Ford Foundation over and above securing money from various other networks.
A report in NDTV mentions that National Foundation for India (NFI) is running TRC. As per the report, between 2015 and 2022, NFI received Rs 58.1 crore in foreign donations. Of this, Rs 94 lakh was donated by Soros’ Foundation to Promote Open Society, the Omidyar Network contributed Rs 3.3 crore and the Ford Foundation donated Rs 12 crore.
In 2016, when Soros’ foundations were placed on prior permission list, there were no direct donation but individual donations by Indians increased. Example, Swadhikar, an NGO funded by George Soros’ OSF that supports Dalit rights groups started donating to NFI in November 2016.
Nitin Sethi, the Founding Editor of TRC (January 2020) was also associated with NFI from September 2020 to March 2023.
Soros and his regime change operations
That Soros funded NGOs are working overtime to undermine democratic institutions in India does not come as much of a surprise considering Soros and his web of NGOs have been associated with regime change operations especially in the Indian subcontinent in last few years.
One of the points Soros and his stooges as well as India’s main opposition party Congress has been raising is reduced trust on India’s democracy. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has time and again cast aspersions on the voting, the independent bodies such as the ECI, the ED, the state police administration, et al. Rahul Gandhi has often said on international platforms that democracy in India has weakened or dead and on multiple occasions called for foreign intervention, almost like the regime change operations in India’s neighbouring countries.
This dismissing the SIR process, which is being carried out as per the rules laid down by our constitution which Rahul Gandhi claims to be protecting, is a big disservice to the democracy that India is.
