DAILY FROM: AHMEDABAD, CHANDIGARH, DELHI, JAIPUR, KOLKATA, LUCKNOW, MUMBAI, NAGPUR, PATNA, PUNE, VADODARA JOURNALISM OF COURAGE `6.00 WWW.INDIANEXPRESS.COM SINCE 1932 CBC 15502/13/0029/2526 WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2025, LUCKNOW, LATE CITY, 16 PAGES 99% DELETIONS DUE TO DEATH, MIGRATION, DUPLICATION Final Bihar voter rolls out: 6 per cent dip since June; in most deletions, citizenship no factor DAMINI NATH, RITIKA CHOPRA & HIMANSHU HARSH NEW DELHI, PATNA, SEPT 30 THE FINAL Bihar voter list published Tuesday has 7.42 crore voters, about 6 per cent less than 7.89 crore as on June 24 this year, thedaytheElectionCommission of India(ECI)announcedathreemonth Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in the state. While the Election Commission and Bihar Chief ElectoralOfficer(CEO)didnotdisclose how many foreigners were removed from the electoral roll, sources in Bihar told The Indian Express that nearly 99 per cent of the deletions were on account of death,permanentmigrationand duplication. This flies in the face oftheECI’sdefenceoftheSIRalso asacitizenshipverificationdrive. IntheSupremeCourt,theECI had argued it was within its powers to seek proof of citizenship and justified placing the burden of proof on electors, but theoutcomeshowsthatnon-citizens or foreigners were barely a factor — raising questions on THE BIHAR ELECTORATE 7.72 cr electors in 2024 LS polls JAN2025 7.80 cr after special summary revision JUNE24, 2025 7.89 cr as of June 24, the day SIR began AUG1,2025 7.24 cr in draft SIR voter roll SEPT30,2025 7.42 cr in final roll after SIR exercise whythebarforinclusionwasset so high in the first place. In the SIR, as many as 68.6 lakh names were struck off, of which 65 lakh were removed when the draft roll was CONTINUEDONPAGE2 Now a security ‘threat’, Wangchuk was Govt’s expert for all seasons Behind the count: SC nudge, feedback from field expanded ambit of SIR DAMINI NATH & RITIKA CHOPRA NEW DELHI, SEPTEMBER 30 WHENTHEElectionCommission (EC) ordered a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of Bihar’s electoral rollsinJune,breakingfromprecedent by requiring voters to produce one of 11 documents to prove eligibility, the move drew JAY MAZOOMDAAR NEW DELHI, SEPTEMBER 30 LAST FRIDAY, Sonam Wangchuk wasdetainedundertheNational SecurityAct(NSA)afterbeingaccused of instigating the protests demandingstatehoodforLadakh, which turned violent, leading to four deaths in police firing in Leh on September 24. The NSA empowers governments to act preemptively against individuals seenasathreattopublicorderor national security. BUSINESS AS USUAL BY UNNY SANTOSH SINGH PATNA, SEPTEMBER 30 “Bhagwan ka shukr hai mera naam reh gaya voter list mein. Aadhaarcardsehikaambangaya (Thank god my name is in the final electoral roll. The Aadhaar card was all that I needed),” an elated Mukesh Kumar, a 40year-old driver who lives in Chitkohra locality in Patna’s EXPRESS NETWORK CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Mukesh Kumar, 40, shows his Aadhaar and voter ID cards. File/ Rahul Sharma Digha Assembly segment, told The Indian Express on Tuesday. Ahead of the November Assembly elections and after a three-month-long Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise in the state, the Election Commission (EC) on Tuesday published its final electoral roll for Bihar containing the names of 7.42 crore electors. According to the EC’s draft roll for Bihar, CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 SIR did little, other than thwart NDA’s exclusionary design: Opp SANTOSH SINGH PATNA, SEPTEMBER 30 AS THE Election Commission Tuesdaypublishedthefinalelectoral rolls for Bihar, following a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) drive,OppositionpartiesRJDand Congress said the NDA government at the Centre had failed “in its nefarious bid of mass exclusion of electors”. ThankingtheSupremeCourt for directing the EC to allow Aadhaar card apart from the 11 documents mandated by it for enrolment in the SIR, the MahagathbandhanalliesalsoattributedthistotheVoterAdhikar Yatra of Rahul Gandhi and Tejashwi Yadav. Their yatra from August 17 to September 1, across 23 of 38 Bihar districts, the parties said, had “put the EC and Centre CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Bareilly clashes: Cleric’s aide shot at in ‘encounter’, demolition drive on SAMAN HUSAIN NOIDA, SEPTEMBER 30 THEBAREILLYpolicesaidTuesday that they shot at and injured the district president of Ittehad-eMillat Council (IMC) during an “encounter”andarrested17more people in connection with last week’s clashes over the ‘I Love Muhammad’ row. Local authorities also launched sealing and demolition drives against CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 During the demolition drive in Bareilly on Tuesday. PTI Initiative a viable pathway to securing peace in larger West Asian region: PM SHUBHAJIT ROY NEW DELHI, SEPTEMBER 30 HOURS AFTER US President Donald Trump announced a 20-point peace plan for Gaza, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday welcomed the proposal and expressed hope that “all concerned will come together” and support “this effort toendconflictandsecurepeace”. “We welcome President Donald J Trump’s announcementof acomprehensiveplanto end the Gaza conflict. It provides a viable pathway to long term and sustainable peace, security and development for the Palestinian and Israeli people, as also for the larger West Asian region.Wehopethatallconcerned will come together behind CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 U.S. President Donald Trump with Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House. Reuters INSIDE TRUMP GIVES HAMAS ‘3 TO 4’ DAYS TO ACCEPT HIS PLAN TRUMP’S GAZA PLAN: PEACE, DEAL PAGES 12, 9 Stopped India-Pakistan war, Munir said I saved millions of lives: Trump YOSHITA SINGH NEW YORK, WASHINGTON, SEPTEMBER 30 USPRESIDENTDonaldTrumpon Tuesday repeated his claim that he ended the “very big” conflict between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan. In his remarks to military leaders in Quantico, Trump also said that he was “honoured” when Pakistan Army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir, “who is a very important guy in Pakistan”, praised him for saving millions of lives. “I have settled so many wars” in the nine months of his administration, he said. “I've settled seven. And yesterday we might have settled the biggest of them all, although I don't know, Pakistan and India was very big, both nuclear powers. I settled that.” Referring to his peace plan to end the Gaza conflict, announced on Monday, Trump said, “We got it, I think, settled. We'll see. Hamas has to agree, and if they don't, it's going to be very tough on them. But it is what it is. But all of the Arab nations, Muslim nations, have agreed.” In his remarks, Trump again went back to the conflict between India and Pakistan and praised the Pakistani officials for lauding him for saving millions of lives.“IhadIndiaandPakistan, CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 India experienced 5th wettest monsoon Himanta’s bid to arm people off to since 2001, more rain in October: IMD slow start: 266 apply, none okayed ANJALI MARAR BENGALURU, SEPTEMBER 30 EVEN AS the southwest monsoon season officially ended Tuesday, the IMD has said that rain will continue well into October over the northeast, central and peninsular India due to delayed monsoon withdrawal. This year, the all-India rainfallduringtheJunetoSeptember season was 937.2mm, a surplus CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 proof. But Aadhaar, ration cards, and even its own Electors Photo Identity Card (EPIC) — ● which would have ensured maximum coverage and inclusion — were excluded. Interestingly, EPIC was accepted in the last Special Intensive Revision of 2003, as The Indian Express first reported With only Aadhaar as ID, Patna driver recalls struggle to make it to voter list STALIN CAUTIOUS ON ACTING AGAINST HIM, VIJAY DARES: DO WHAT YOU WANT 9 WORKERS KILLED IN MISHAP AT POWER PLANT SITE IN TN P 7 At a market in Leh during a 4-hour relaxation in the curfew on Tuesday. PTI E criticism and challenges in court for resembling a citizenship check. But over three months later, the exercise that ended Tuesday looked very different, altered by Supreme Court interventionsaswellasfeedback from the field. At the outset, the Commission made inclusion conditional on documentary EXPLAINED After deletion of 68.6 lakh names in SIR, total 7.42 cr voters in electoral list PM hails Trump’s Gaza peace plan, asks ‘all concerned’ to support effort of 8 per cent. A well-marked low pressure area near Kutch will lead to rain in Gujarat and parts of Maharashtra until Thursday, it said. Another fresh low pressure system is likely to develop over the north Bay of Bengal and its land-ward movement will result in rain over Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtratillearlynextweek, the IMD's extended-range forecast suggested. “Due to these unfavourable conditions, we do not see any further withdrawal of the monsoon from central and eastern India regions during next one week. Also, the overall monsoon withdrawal may be delayed and would not be completed before October 12,” Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, director general, IMD, said on Tuesday. The line of monsoon withdrawal continued to pass throughVeraval,Bharuch,Ujjain, Jhansi, and Shahjahanpur. CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 SUKRITA BARUAH GUWAHATI, SEPTEMBER 30 MORE THAN a month since the Assam government launched a portal for “indigenous citizens” in the state’s “vulnerable and remote” areas to seek arms licences,266peoplehaveapplied, with the two Muslim-majority districts of Nagaon and Dhubri accounting for over threefourths of the applications. Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma While28applicationshavebeen rejected, none have been acceptedsofar,indicatingthecareful balance officials are attempting to strike before arming people with weapons. InMay,theAssamcabinethad approved the special scheme, with Chief Minister Himanta BiswaSarmasayingthatthepossession of firearms would enable citizens in such areas to protect themselves from “demographic and security challenges”. On severalinstances,hespecificallymentionedareaswhereBengali-origin Muslims are in the majority. On August 14, the government launched an online portal CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Homebound: That Covid story continues, in the friend who lived PAGE 1 ANCHOR MANISH SAHU LUCKNOW, SEPTEMBER 30 LIFE HAS moved on for Mohammad Saiyub Siddiqui — and hasn’t. A day after its release last week, Siddiqui went to watch Homebound, the film based on his life that is India’s entry to the Oscars. He and his four friends caught the film on Saturday at a theatre in Dubai, where the 27-year-old now works — a long way from Surat, from where he and friend Amrit Prasad were trying to make their way home during the first wave of Covid when he died; even further away from the village in Uttar Pradesh where they grew up together.Homeboundwasanacute reminder for Saiyub of that long journey they made; also, that he never left the road. Three years after the story of Amrit’s death, and Saiyub’s efforts to keep him alive, went viral,Saiyublefthomeagaintofind work. Since 2023, he has been employed as a labourer at house construction sites in Dubai. He left as soon as he “got the opportunity”, says Saiyub, over thephonefromDubai,wherehe shares a room with four others, all of them from UP, with two of them from his village of BarahuwaDevariinBastidistrict. “I send around Rs 12,000 to Rs 13,000everymonthbackhome.” ThatishowAmritandSaiyub had found themselves in Surat too. Childhood friends, their houses 600 metres apart in the Hindu-dominated Barahuwa Devari, they studied together up to Class 5 at a government school. Then, both dropped out, (Clockwise from top) Mohd Saiyub Siddiqui, who is in Dubai, Amrit Prasad who died in 2020; an Express report about them dated May 18, 2020 and left their village in separate directions to find work. Later, Amrit persuaded his friend to join him in Surat, where the two joined the huge migrant workforce employed in the Gujarat city’s textile mills. In May 2020, after the Centre announced an immediate Covid lockdown and the mills downed shutters, the two 22-year-olds set out for home, a journey of nearly 1,500 km. Riding on the back of a truck filled with migrant workers in the summer heat,Amritfellillbythetimethe vehicle reached Shivpuri in Madhya Pradesh. Saiyub urged the driver to stop for medical help, but he and the other passengers, desperate to get home, opposedit.SoSaiyubgotoff with Amrit to find him medical aid. The photo of the two of them that went viral showed Saiyub cradling Amrit’s head on his lap by the roadside, and trying to revive him using a wet handkerchief. Saiyub says a passerby who tried to help them took their photo, and shared it on social media. The photo reached their families too, and they started calling Saiyub. Amrit eventually didn’t survive, and Saiyub arranged for an ambulance and took his friend’s body home — reaching their village two days later, on May 17, 2020. “Over a year after Amrit’s death, film director Neeraj Ghaywancametomyhomewith his team and told me he wanted tomakeafilmonus,”saysSaiyub. Ghaywan had got to know their story via an article by author Basharat Peer in The New York Times. “Neerajsaidastoryaboutthe friendship between a Muslim and a Dalit was important in these times of negativity in the country. After listening to him, CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Lucknow