Bihar migrants in Tamil Nadu list? Claim baseless: Election Commission

CHENNAI: Former Union minister P Chidambaram on Sunday termed the reported move to add 6.5 lakh migrant workers from Bihar to the electoral rolls in Tamil Nadu as "alarming and illegal," prompting Election Commission to dismiss his claims as "misleading and baseless."

Chidambaram called Election Commission's SIR exercise in Bihar "an insult to migrant workers and a gross interference in the rights of the electorate in Tamil Nadu," a day after DMK and its allies opposed the poll body's decision to register migrant workers in the states of their domicile.

"If a migrant worker's family has a permanent home in Bihar and continues to live there, how can the worker be considered permanently migrated to Tamil Nadu? How can he or she be enrolled as a voter in Tamil Nadu?" Chidambaram asked.

In a fact-check post on X, Election Commission cited Section 19(b) of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, which states that every ordinary resident in a constituency shall be entitled to be registered in the electoral roll of that constituency.

"Therefore, a person originally belonging to Tamil Nadu but ordinarily residing in Delhi is entitled to be registered as an elector in Delhi. Similarly, a person originally from Bihar but ordinarily residing in Chennai is entitled to be registered as an elector in Chennai," Election Commission explained on X.


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