What Election Commission data says about ‘vote chori’ in the Bihar elections

The Bihar Assembly elections ended with a huge mandate for the Nitish Kumar-led National Democratic Alliance. But Opposition parties have alleged that “vote chori” is the reason for their sweeping defeat.

Much of the suspicion has centred on the Election Commission’s special intensive revision exercise, or SIR, which shrunk the state’s voter lists by 47 lakh voters in the run-up to the polls – 68.6 lakh names were removed from the rolls and 21.53 lakh new electors added.

Did the deletions have an impact on the election results? In the weeks following the results, the Election Commission released granular data on the Bihar polls. We analysed the data to see if any red flags or anomalies showed up – nothing significant stood out.

Villages with high deletions

In August, in the middle of t