Cong to finalise Bihar candidate list today

The Congress’ Central Election Committee (CEC) will meet on Wednesday to finalise candidates for the upcoming Bihar Assembly elections.

The high-level meeting, chaired by party president Mallikarjun Kharge, will be held virtually. Rahul, who is currently on a visit to South American countries, will join the deliberations online. Other CEC members such as Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, KC Venugopal, Amee Yajnik, Uttam Kumar Reddy and TS Singh Deo will also attend it.

The Congress on Tuesday also accused the Election Commission (EC) of failing to ensure transparency in the special intensive revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls in Bihar.

With the Supreme Court resuming hearings on the SIR exercise, Congress communications in-charge Jairam Ramesh said the poll body had failed to disclose how many non-citizens were actually removed from the voter list.

“Much noise was made about the need to weed out non-citizens, but the EC has not had the integrity or courage to reveal how many were removed,” Ramesh posted on X, sharing an analysis from a national daily that described the SIR as flawed in “completeness, equity and accuracy”.

The Opposition has alleged that the exercise was politically motivated and conducted under pressure from the ruling BJP. However, the EC has maintained that the revision was meant to ensure that only eligible citizens remained on the rolls, while removing ineligible names.

With Bihar set to vote in two phases on November 6 and 11, and counting scheduled for November 14, the dispute over the voter roll has further intensified the political contest between the NDA and the INDIA bloc.