India, Aug. 9 -- I would argue that the most important issue that will determine how I view the special intensive revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls presently underway in Bihar is the number of people whose names have been deleted or - and mark this carefully - have failed to be included. I fear the total could be considerably greater than what we've been told. Let's look at the details to see if you share my concern.

On August 1, the Election Commission of India (ECI) released the draft rolls confirming that 6.56 million names have been deleted, nearly 9% of those who were there before the exercise began. This is already disturbing.

As HT has earlier revealed, this means that as things stand there are fewer people registered to vote...