(As Assam gears up for the Assembly polls, every Wednesday, Special Correspondent Sukrita Baruah decodes the electoral trends, political signals, and campaign moves shaping the contest.)
A Special Revision (SR) exercise that the Election Commission (EC) has repeatedly emphasised “would not affect those whose names are already in voter lists” has descended into politically charged disorder in election-bound Assam and has taken centre stage as the sparring ground for political parties.
Last November, it was announced that unlike other states headed for elections in 2026, Assam — because the National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise has not yet been taken to its logical conclusion — would go through a less-demanding SR process not involving any document verification. Instead, EC officials in the state emphasised that this would simply be a “modified version” of the summary revision of electoral rolls that happens annually in each state, with the key added component of rigour being that Booth Level Officers (BLOs) would visit the homes of every voter enrolled in their polling booths to physically verify whether they are still alive and residents of the same booth, and identify new voters who should be included in the rolls.
This phase of the SR process — between November 22 and December 20 — was uneventful and voters across Assam were relieved to find their names were included in the draft rolls published on December 27. The next step of the SR process was the claims and objections phase and this is when things took a different turn.
Voters across constituencies began receiving notices summoning them for hearings based on “objections” or complaints against the inclusion of their name in the electoral roll, either on the ground that they are dead or “absent”, or have “permanently shifted” from their polling booth. In several cases, individuals filed such objections against dozens of existing voters. The scale of objections filed and the number of people who had to line up for hearings at the hearing centres even caused hearings to come to a halt in three constituencies in Nagaon until the district administration could expand the infrastructure at those centres.
District administrations in multiple districts such as Nagaon, Lakhimpur, and Goalpara issued notices warning that individuals submitting multiple objections against multiple voters was not a valid practice. They said action would be initiated against those found to have filed “false, misleading, or vexatious” objections.
Confusion among voters
While the EC has yet to release information on the number of objections filed in this second phase, which ended on January 22, The Indian Express looked at the number of objections in some constituencies where alarm was raised about bulk and false objections.
In Nalbari district’s Barkhetri constituency, where there were 2,26,424 voters as per the draft rolls, 15,490 objections were filed. This means objections were filed against 6.8% of the electors in the draft rolls. In Lakhimpur district’s Ronganodi constituency, objections were filed against 8,966 of 1,80,412 electors in the draft rolls (4.97%); and in the Nagaon district’s Barhampur constituency, objections were filed against 12,830 of the 2,30,551 electors in the draft rolls (5.56%).
As panic and confusion spread and people lined up for hearings, Opposition parties expressed concerns that large numbers of valid voters would be left out of the final rolls, which will be published on February 10, because of “arbitrary and illegal action”. In cases of false objections, many people said, the complainants did not even turn up for the hearings, even though the Registration of Electors Rules require both the objectee and objector to be present.
While the office of the state Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) and district administrations sought to play down the concerns by saying hearings and verification are a safeguard against arbitrary deletions, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma stirred the pot further by calling the involvement of BJP workers and functionaries in the complaints a way to keep Bengali-origin Muslims — pejoratively referred to as Miyas — “under pressure.”
“We have to issue notices to Miyas living here. There is nothing to hide. We are troubling them … They have to understand that, at some level, the people of Assam are resisting them. Otherwise, they will get a walkover,” Sarma told reporters.
With the state preparing to head into elections in March-April and the swirl of claims, allegations, and complaints surrounding the SR process over the past week, all eyes will be on the final list and the extent to which these objections will be reflected in it.