In Bihar’s Kaupa village in Rohtas assembly constituency lives a family of dots. 

On the voter list of booth number 106, 10 voters are recorded with just a single punctuation mark – “.” – as their name. Seven of their father’s names are also “.”. One is a woman named “.” married to a man called “.”. All are between 26 and 28 years old, living together in house number 1. 

Anyone can verify this. Visit the Election Commission’s voter service portal, select district Rohtas, assembly constituency Dehri, roll type SIR Draft 2025, constituency number 106 (Madhya Vidyalaya Kaupa, Dakshin Bhag) – and there they are.

Here’s why this matters. On June 24, the EC launched a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Bihar with one stated aim: to clean up the electoral rolls so that no ineligible voter made it to the list. 

In an extraordinary step, over 7.8 crore registered voters were asked to prove their citizenship. Nearly 78,000 booth level officers (BLOs) went door-to-door collecting enumeration forms from every voter, providing receipts, and passing the paperwork up through supervisors, assistant electoral officers, district officers, and finally the Chief Electoral Officer of Bihar, Vinod Singh Gunjiyal. When Phase 1 ended on August 1, the EC hailed the SIR as “a stellar example of unparalleled, transparent and impartial team work” that had reached each village, each ward, each house to add the name of every eligible elector.

And yet, months later, the family of dots still sits on the list.

Newslaundry reached out to Shayam Narayan Ram, the booth level officer of booth 106 to ask about who filled out the enumeration forms for the family of dots. We also reached out to the EC as well as the office of the Chief Electorate of Bihar. This report will be updated if they respond.

Sanjay Kumar, professor and co-director of Lokniti, said such mistakes “are bound to happen” if the EC tries to complete a process like SIR – “which normally requires six months to be completed” – in a month’s time. “This is disturbing and should be a matter of concern. The sad thing is that SIR was being done to clean all these mistakes from the voter rolls. But the way it was being conducted it will make rolls much worse.”

Jagdeep S Chhokar, founder of the Association for Democratic Reforms, which is also one of the petitioners who have challenged the SIR in the Supreme Court, said, “This is true irony. The existence of a voter in the Republic of India has been reduced to a dot.”

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