India’s electoral system, a cornerstone of its identity as the world’s largest democracy, relies on the accuracy and integrity of its voter list to ensure fair representation. However, a recent demographic reconstruction report titled “The Demographic Reconstruction and Electoral Roll Inflation: Estimating the Legitimate Voter Base in Bihar, India” by Dr. Vidhu Shekhar and Dr. Milan Kumar reveals a troubling issue in Bihar, one of India’s most populous states, where the official voter roll is inflated by approximately 77 lakh names, nearly 10 percent of the total electorate.
Dr. Vidhu Shekhar is currently a Faculty member at Bhavan’s SPJIMR, Mumbai. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from IIM Calcutta, an MBA from IIM Calcutta, and a B.Tech from IIT Kharagpur. Dr. Milan Kumar is currently a Faculty member at the Indian Institute of Management Vishakhapatnam. He holds a Ph.D. from IIM Calcutta.
The 2025 report employs rigorous demographic methods rooted solely in official data, including historical electoral rolls, age-specific survival rates, birth cohort projections, and interstate migration figures, to reconstruct what Bihar’s actual electorate should look like.
This discrepancy, equivalent to a city the size of Pune, raises serious questions about the legitimacy of the electoral process. These excess entries, or “phantom voters,” are not explained by births, deaths, or migration patterns, casting a shadow over the credibility of Bihar’s democratic framework.
In a state where elections are often decided by razor-thin margins, this issue is not merely administrative but a potential threat to the democratic process itself. The scale of the problem is staggering.
As of July 2025, the Election Commission of India (ECI) reports 7.89 crore registered voters in Bihar. Yet, a meticulous demographic analysis estimates that only 7.12 crore individuals should legitimately appear on the roll, leaving an unexplained surplus of 77 lakh names. This discrepancy is particularly alarming in Bihar, where electoral contests are fiercely competitive.
The 2020 Bihar Assembly election, for instance, was the closest in the state’s history, with nearly 20 percent of seats decided by margins of less than 2.5 percent, and 17 seats won by under 1 percent.
In such a context, the presence of phantom voters, names that do not correspond to living, eligible residents, could easily tip the scales, undermining the will of the electorate. To uncover this anomaly, the research team employed a rigorous three-step demographic reconstruction model, relying solely on official data to ensure accuracy.
Step-1: Estimating Survivors from the 2003 list
The first step involved estimating the number of surviving voters from the 2003 electoral roll, which was compiled during a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) that included door-to-door verification, making it a reliable baseline. This roll listed 4.96 crore voters, but without age-specific data. To estimate how many of these voters remain alive in 2025, the team used the 2001 Census to reconstruct the age profile of the 2003 electorate, advanced it by 22 years, and applied mortality rates from the Sample Registration System.
The findings showed that only 3.41 crore of the original 4.96 crore voters are likely still alive, with survival rates varying significantly by age, over 90 percent for those aged 18–24 in 2003, but just 7 percent for those over 65.
This biologically grounded estimate forms the foundation of the legitimate voter base.
Step 2: New voters born between 1985 and 2007
The second step focused on new eligible voters, those born between 1985 and 2007, who would have reached voting age (18) by 2025. Using Crude Birth Rates from Census data, National Family Health Surveys (NFHS), and the Central Bureau of Health Intelligence, the team estimated annual birth cohorts for Bihar, adjusting for survival rates using state-specific life tables.
This analysis yielded an estimated 4.83 crore individuals who are alive and eligible to vote in 2025. These new voters represent the second pillar of the legitimate electorate, accounting for those who have entered the voting pool since 2003.
Step 3: Tracking the migration
The third step addressed Bihar’s high rate of outmigration, a critical factor in voter roll accuracy. Permanent outmigrants, those who have left Bihar and settled elsewhere, should be removed from the voter list, but this rarely occurs due to reliance on voluntary deletion requests, which are seldom filed.
Using the 2011 Census, the team identified 49.65 lakh adult interstate migrants who left Bihar between 2003 and 2011. Assuming a consistent outmigration rate of 5.5 lakh per year from 2012 to 2025, an additional 72 lakh outmigrants were estimated by the researchers. After accounting for 8.8 lakh inward migrants, the net permanent outmigration totalled 1.12 crore individuals.
These individuals, no longer residing in Bihar, should not appear on its voter roll. Combining these calculations, 3.41 crore surviving voters from 2003, 4.83 crore new eligible voters, minus 1.12 crore net outmigrants, yields an estimated legitimate electorate of 7.12 crore. Compared to the ECI’s official figure of 7.89 crore, this leaves an unexplained surplus of 77 lakh names, a phantom electorate with no demographic justification.
At the constituency level, this inflation translates to 25,000-50,000 excess entries per seat, a significant number in elections often decided by just a few thousand votes. These phantom names enable fraudulent voting, distort turnout figures, create unwarranted mandates, and allow multiple registrations for single individuals, all of which erode the democratic process. The root causes of this inflated voter base lie in systemic and administrative failures.
The process for deleting voters who have migrated permanently is inadequate, as Form 8 for deletion depends on voluntary action, which is rarely taken.
Similarly, the lack of integration with death records means deceased individuals often remain on the rolls for years. Weak verification processes, particularly in slums and border areas, exacerbate the problem, as these regions are prone to phantom entries and undocumented migrants.
Furthermore, reliance on documents like Aadhaar and ration cards, which are not designed to verify citizenship, facilitates erroneous registrations. These lapses are not unique to Bihar; states like Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Odisha, and Jharkhand, with similar migration patterns and administrative challenges, likely face comparable issues, suggesting a national crisis in electoral roll integrity. The implications of this problem extend beyond Bihar, threatening the credibility of India’s electoral system as a whole.
If Bihar’s voter rolls are inflated by 9.7 percent, millions of illegitimate entries could be distorting elections nationwide. To address this crisis, the Election Commission has to launched a Special Intensive Revision in Bihar, the first since 2003.
However, the researchers say, this effort must be thorough and robust to succeed. Field verification, once the gold standard, must be reinstated to ensure accuracy. Electoral databases should be linked to death and migration records to enable automatic updates, and reliance on easily forged documents like ration cards must be reduced.
Legislative reforms are also needed to mandate automatic voter roll updates upon death or relocation, ensuring the system reflects reality. Ultimately, the legitimacy of any election begins with the integrity of the voter list.
The researchers note that the presence of 77 lakh unverifiable names in Bihar’s rolls is not a minor clerical error but a democratic fault line that undermines the sanctity of every vote. This issue transcends partisan politics, as it affects the foundational trust in the electoral process. The data is clear, and the challenge is evident.
The question now is whether India will act to restore the credibility of its voter rolls and, by extension, its democracy.
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