Overview
- West Bengal and Bihar said they will use deletions from the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, a voter-list cleanup run by the Election Commission, to screen people out of welfare rolls.
- In West Bengal, the new government said those struck off, including people with appeals pending, will be left off new schemes such as the Annapurna Bhandar for now.
- In Bihar, Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary said people removed in the SIR will lose access to rations and other schemes, and he added that their bank passbooks will be canceled later.
- The SIR cut about 65 lakh names in Bihar and about 91 lakh in West Bengal, including more than 27 lakh in Bengal tagged as logical discrepancies who could not vote in April.
- Opposition leaders from the RJD, CPI-ML and Congress condemned the plan as anti-poor and raised constitutional concerns about using a voter list to decide welfare eligibility.