On September 30, as Bihar bustled with the rituals of Ashtami and the Durga pandals threw open their doors for the devotees, another ritual—one of democracy—reached its own culmination. The Election Commission of India (ECI) published Bihar’s final electoral roll, closing months of house-to-house verification, deletions, inclusions, objections and scrutiny. For a state forever caught in the crosswinds of political churn, the voter list is not merely a bureaucratic ledger but a mirror of the citizenry—who remains within the fold, who is cast out, and who, at the eleventh hour, is ushered back in.

The headline figure is blunt but telling: 7.42 crore electors can cast their vote in the forthcoming assembly election. That number, in itself, conceals a story of attrition and recovery—of lakhs

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