Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav attributed the NDA’s massive lead in Bihar to the controversial Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter rolls, claiming the “electoral conspiracy has now been exposed” and promising to thwart similar moves in UP, West Bengal, and Tamil Nadu.
November 14, 2025: As trends confirmed a sweeping victory for the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the Bihar Assembly elections, Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav delivered the first high-profile Opposition response, attributing the Mahagathbandhan’s defeat not to voter mandate but to alleged manipulation of the electoral process.
Yadav specifically took aim at the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), an extensive voter roll clean-up exercise carried out by the Election Commission of India (ECI) ahead of the polls, which the Opposition had fiercely criticized for allegedly targeting and deleting voters from marginalized communities.
‘The SIR Game’ is Now Exposed
In a sharp post on X, the former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister suggested that the SIR was a key factor in the NDA’s overwhelming performance, which saw the alliance leading in over 193 of the 243 seats at the time of his statement.
Akhilesh Yadav: “The game played by the SIR in Bihar will no longer be possible in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, or elsewhere because this electoral conspiracy has now been exposed.”
He went on to vow heightened vigilance by his party to prevent what he called a “fraud” from being perpetrated in upcoming elections across other major states. He stated that the SP’s “PPTV” (PDA Prahari, or PDA Sentinel) would act like a “CCTV” to thwart the BJP’s plans.
NDA Defends ECI, Blasts Opposition
The NDA swiftly rejected the Opposition’s claims, characterizing the allegations against the ECI as the tantrums of losing parties trying to distract from their electoral failure.
NDA leaders argued that the same parties now complaining about the SIR exercise—which aims to ensure accurate, error-free voter lists—would have remained silent had they been in the lead. They claimed the Opposition was attempting to “create chaos by attacking independent institutions” because they were unable to win an honest mandate from the people of Bihar.
The SIR exercise had been a major point of contention throughout the campaign, with the Mahagathbandhan repeatedly alleging that the deletion of a large number of names, particularly in minority-dominated regions, was a deliberate attempt to suppress their votes. The ECI had defended the process as necessary to remove deceased, duplicate, and permanently migrated voters and maintain the integrity of the electoral roll.