The Congress has voiced concern over the purported inclusion of "temporary voters" from other states in the electoral records, raising "vote chori" claims in Assam regarding the Special Revision of the state's electoral rolls procedure. The party staged a demonstration in Guwahati on Tuesday, claiming that voter lists were manipulated to favor the BJP.
In contrast to states like West Bengal and Rajasthan, Assam is undergoing a "Special Revision" rather than a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) due to its unique situation of having completed a National Register of Citizens (NRC) procedure.
House-to-house inspections by Booth Level Officers (BLOs) to physically verify the current voter list were a crucial part of the Special Revision process in Assam; however, unlike the SIR, document verification is not a part of the process.
In light of this, the draft electoral roll was made public on December 27. Until January 22, a claims and objections procedure will take place.
Congressman and Leader of the Opposition in the Assam Assembly Debabrata Saikia accused "unauthorized inclusion of non-Assamese speaking voters" in a letter to Chief Election Commissioner of India Gyanesh Kumar.
He gave the example of "four non-Assamese individuals" who were enrolled from two houses in Guwahati "unbeknownst to the family."
He cited remarks made by Assam Chief Electoral Officer Anurag Goel, who stated that voters who have just relocated to Assam could petition to change their registration address here and that the process is unlikely to impact current voters.
"I also brought up this issue in the Assembly, questioning what would happen to the Assamese identity and culture, which the administration frequently discusses, when the decision-making authority would be lost due to the large number of non-Assamese speakers.
Rahul Gandhi has been challenging the ECI at this time with numerous examples of temporary voters from other states casting ballots in other states.
To make the Assamese people aware of this, we are sounding the alarm. He stated on Tuesday, "We have seen in the case of Karbi Anglong, where people are concerned about non-tribals influencing culture and decision making."
According to a top Assamese election official, complaints can be filed through the claims and objections procedure. "Migrant Indian citizens are entitled to be added to voter lists.
The people in the Guwahati case that the Congress has brought up were also on the voter list in 2018 and lived in a leased home.
The official stated that any complaints regarding the incorrect inclusion of any individual may be filed by completing Form 7, and that these complaints must be made explicitly against individuals rather than in generic letters.
The official said, "This is a transparent process, and the names of every individual whose inclusion has been objected to and the name of the person who has raised the objection are on the CEO website."
Himanta Biswa Sarma, the chief minister, also instructed the opposition party to follow the process if they had any issues that needed to be resolved. "The Opposition should follow set procedures if they have any genuine concerns, instead of crying foul in the media," he stated.
Akhil Gogoi of the Raijor Dol, another opposition leader, claimed that state BJP president Dilip Saikia gave workers and MLAs orders to present lists of "non-BJP voters" in their booths in order to have their names "deleted."
Saikia has denied this allegation. 4,78,992 deceased voters were found to need to be deleted during the house-to-house survey, 5,23,680 voters were discovered to have relocated from their voter registration addresses, and 53,619 duplicate entries needed to be corrected.
Compared to the previous final roll released in January 2025, the draft roll showed a total of 2,52,01,624 voters, a 1.35 percent increase.
