India, Aug. 2 -- The Election Commission of India (ECI) released the draft electoral roll for Bihar after its Special Intensive Revision (SIR) on Friday. The draft electoral roll, according to HT's calculations on data sourced from ECI, has 72.4 million electors. This number is the same as what was released by ECI on July 27 (no detailed break-up was given then) and 4.9 million or 6.3% less than the number of electors in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the latest period for which we have elector count for the state.

To be sure, an ECI press release issued on Friday says that there can still be additions and deletions to this draft roll and the final count before the assembly elections could vary. Moreover, ECI's own status report on the ex...