Yogendra Yadav writes: Let’s audit Bihar SIR. It makes for sad reading

Now that the final electoral rolls for Bihar are out, as is the election schedule, here is a provisional audit of the SIR exercise. We assess the quality of the new voters’ list in Bihar on three globally accepted parameters of voter registration — completeness, equity and accuracy.

The first measure of the quality of electoral rolls is completeness, measured by the proportion of the eligible population that figures on the voters’ list. After the publication of Draft Electoral Rolls in Bihar, we had recorded on these pages (‘The missing voters’, IE, July 31) how the SIR resulted in a shocking drop in the proportion of adults who figured on the voters’ list, from 97 per cent to 88 per cent. The final voters’ list is somewhat of an improvement — 90 per cent of adults have made it to the lis