The IND Alliance parties, baselessly spreading fear regarding the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Bihar, alleging that thousands of legitimate Bihar voters would be disenfranchised by this, could not hide their disdain for the laborious people of Bihar for long.

Recently, several Tamil politicians, including DMK general secretary Duraimurugan, VCK president Thol Thirumavalavan, NTK chief coordinator Seeman, and Tamizhaga Vazhvurimai Katchi (TVK), founder T Velmurugan, expressed their contempt for the natives of Bihar living in Tamil Nadu by opposing their inclusion as voters in Tamil Nadu.

Their absurd concerns arose from the results of the SIR in Bihar, which showed that around 36 lakh voters were missing from the state, some of whom might have migrated. The SIR results about the missing Bihar voters made the Tamil Nadu politicians believe that they might have migrated to Tamil Nadu.

The INDI alliance politicians opposed the possible inclusion of workers from Bihar on the voter list in Tamil Nadu. “This is a problem in Tamil Nadu, as they came to work here as guest workers. But giving them voter IDs in Tamil Nadu will result in political change in the future,” said DMK general secretary Duraimurugan.

Alarmed by the possibility of an SIR, which is a routine electoral roll revision exercise, being conducted in Tamil Nadu, VCK president Thol Thirumavalavan urged Chief Minister MK Stalin to convene an all-party meeting to address the issue. Thirumavalavan claimed that if an SIR is conducted, the EC would add lakhs of workers from other states to the state voter list, like how Dalits and minorities were allegedly removed from the voter list in Bihar. “The ECI is carrying out Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Bihar, where Dalits and minorities are eliminated from the voters’ list,” Thirumavalavan alleged. He added that this would change the “political scenario” of the state.

Voicing similar fears, NTK chief coordinator Seeman termed the inclusion of “people from North” in Tamil Nadu’s voter list as an injustice to Tamil people and claimed that it was the BJP’s conspiracy to capture power in the state. “Trying to convert people from the North into voters of Tamil Nadu is a great injustice to Tamil people. All democratic forces should come forward to fight against the BJP for this tyranny, and for trying to undermine the democratic system by using the ECI as a puppet to capture power in states where it cannot govern,” Seeman said.

Expressing a similar sentiment, TVK founder T Velmurugan said, “It is shocking that 6.5 lakh guest workers from Bihar were already added to the Tamil Nadu voters list. Lakhs of guest workers are already working in Tamil Nadu, and this is a challenge to the culture and tradition of the soil”. He further insinuated that North Indians vote based on religion by saying that people in Tamil Nadu do not vote based on religion and that it was the BJP’s plan to include North Indians as voters in the state to influence the election result.

Congress leader P Chidambaram calls changes in eletoral roll as illegal

Joining the chorus, Senior Congress leader and Rajya Sabha MP P Chidambaram wrote a long post on X, masking his anti-Bihari sentiment as concern for Bihari migrant workers. Linking the exclusion of ineligible voters from Bihar’s electoral roll and the alleged addition of voters in Tamil Nadu’s voter list, Chidambaram termed this electoral updation as “alarming and patently illegal”.

The SIR exercise is getting curiouser and curiouser

While 65 lakh voters are in danger of being disenfranchised in Bihar, reports of “adding” 6.5 lakh persons as voters in Tamil Nadu is alarming and patently illegal

Calling them “permanently migrated” is an insult to the…

— P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) August 3, 2025

Chidambaram claimed that like people return their native places for festivals like Chhath puja, they should also go to vote in their native place. He said, “A person to be enrolled as a voter must have a fixed and permanent legal home. The migrant worker has such a home in Bihar (or another state). How can he/she be enrolled as a voter in Tamil Nadu? If the migrant worker’s family has a permanent home in Bihar and lives in Bihar, how can the migrant worker be considered as “permanently migrated” to Tamil Nadu? The ECI is abusing its powers and trying to change the electoral character and patterns of States”.

Election Commission has already fact-checked the Congress leader, clarifying that a person need not be permanent resident of a place to be able to vote there. As per Article 19(1)(e), All Citizens shall have the right to reside and settle in any part of the territory of India. Moreover, As per Section 19(b) of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, every person who is ordinary resident in a constituency shall be entitled to be registered in the electoral roll of that constituency, the ECI added.

The RP Act also gives the meaning of “Ordinary Resident”. The poll panel said, “Therefore, a person originally belonging to Tamil Nadu, but is ordinarily residing in Delhi, is entitled to be registered as an Elector in Delhi. Similarly, a person originally belonging to Bihar, but s ordinarily residing in Chennai, is entitled to be registered as an Elector in Chennai.”

❌ The statements made are Misleading and Baseless#ECIFactCheck

✅Read in detail in the image attached 👇 https://t.co/gRVakP610s pic.twitter.com/gKU9a1gB0t

— Election Commission of India (@ECISVEEP) August 3, 2025

The Election Commission said that there is no need for political leaders to spread false information with respect to the SIR exercise being conducted by ECI at national level.

It is difficult to believe that Chidambaram, who is a senior advocate, would not be aware of the fact that the Indian Constitution and the Representation of People Act, allows any citizen to enroll in the voter list of a constituency, where he ordinarily resides, irrespective of his native place.

India is a union of states and not a confederation of some constituent parts. Indian citizens have a single citizenship and the Constitution provides them the right to reside and work in any part of the country. In view of the clear legal provisions, the hateful remarks of Chidambaram and other INDI alliance politicians are nothing more than pathetic attempts to incite regional sentiments ahead of the state assembly elections in Tamil Nadu next year.

INDI Alliance politicians’ everlasting hatred for the ‘Hindi-speaking people’

This is not the first time that the hard-working people of Bihar, who migrate to other states for work and contribute to the state’s economy, have been subjected to such scorn from the INDI Alliance politicians. In December 2023, DMK MP Dayanidhi Maran made extremely derogatory remarks against Hindi-speaking people from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, saying that these people going to Tamil Nadu end up doing construction work or cleaning roads and toilets.

In March 2022, TMC leader Manoranjan Byapari maliciously referred to theBihari people living in West Bengal as “Beemari” (disease) and asked them to “get lost”. He famously remarked, “Ek Bihari, 100 Beemarii (One Bihari is equal to 100 diseases). The TMC leader was not an excepional case of hatred for Biharis; his anti-Bihari sentiment was shared by his party supremo and the West Bengal CM, Mamata Banerjee, who blamed ‘outsiders’ for incidents of violence and unrest in the state. TMC leaders have long been evading accountability for the miserable law and order situation in the state by conveniently blaming the ‘outsiders’. This helps them appease their fixed voter base.

How Thackeray’s party’s mouthpiece demeaned the Bihari people

The vitriol faced by the people of Bihar at the hands of local parties like the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) and the Shiv Sena (before the split) is no secret. Shiv Sena, which was led by Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray before being split into Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) and Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena, openly opposed the migrant workers of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in Maharashtra. Udhhav Thackeray, whose party, Shiv Sena (UBT), is now an INDI alliance partner, once demanded a permit system to check the influx of Bihari migrant workers in Mumbai.

In 2017, Thackeray’s party’s mouthpiece Saamana, asked the then Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to retract his statement wherein he acknowledged the contribution of North Indians to Mumbai. The mouthpiece claimed that Fadnavis’s statement was an insult to Maharashtra and that Marathi people have the first right over Mumbai. In 2013, after the Delhi gangrape case, Thackeray’s cousin and MNS chief Raj Thackeray blamed Bihari migrants for the heinous crime.

Amid all the vitriol targeted at the Bihari people by the INDI alliance politicians, who treat their states like their fiefdoms, the glaring irony is marked by the silence of Bihar’s regional party, RJD, which is a member of the INDI alliance. The RJD, which makes tall promises of the upliftment of the people of Bihar, did not utter a word in condemnation of all the malicious remarks made by its alliance partners against the people of Bihar. This is a blatant betrayal of leaders like Tejashwi Yadav, whose political ambitions have overshadowed the dignity of the people of Bihar.